The Man vs. the State by Herbert Spencer
The New Toryism Most of those who now pass as liberals are
Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it,
I must point out first what the two political parties originally were, and I must then ask
Dating back to an earlier period than their names, the two political parties at first
stood respectively for two opposed types of social organization, broadly distinguishable
If, instead of using the word cooperation in a limited sense, we use it in its widest sense
The typical structure of the one we see in the army formed of conscripts, in which the
units in their several grades have to fulfil commands on the pain of death and receive
with food and clothing and pay arbitrarily apportioned.
While the typical structure of the other we see in a body of producers or distributors
who severally agree to specified payments and return for specified services and may
at will, after due notice, leave the organization if they do not like it.
During social evolution in England, the distinction between these two fundamentally opposed forms
The truth is familiar that, here as elsewhere, it was habitually by town populations, formed
of workers and traders accustomed to cooperate under contract, that resistances were made
to that coercive rule which characterizes cooperation under status.
While conversely, cooperation under status arising from and adjusted to chronic warfare
was supported in rural districts, originally peopled by military chiefs and their dependents,
where the primitive ideas and traditions survived.
Moreover, this contrast in political leanings, shown before Whig and Tory principles became
and clearly distinguished, continued to be shown afterwards.
At the period of the Revolution, while the villages and smaller towns were monopolized
by Tories, the larger cities and manufacturing districts and the ports of commerce formed
the stronghold of the Liberals.
And that, in spite of exceptions, the like general relation still exists, needs no proving.
Such were the natures of the two parties as indicated by their origins. Observe now how
their natures were indicated by their early doctrines and deeds. Whiggism began with resistance
to Charles II and his cabal in their efforts to re-establish unchecked monarchical power.
The Whigs regarded the monarchy as a civil institution established by the nation for
for the benefit of all its members. While the Tories, the monarch was the delegate
of heaven. And these doctrines involved the beliefs, the one that subjection of citizen
to ruler was conditional, and the other that it was unconditional. Describing Whig and
Tory as conceived at the end of the seventeenth century, some fifty years before he wrote
The Power and Majesty of the People and Original Contracts, the Authority and Independency
of Parliaments, Liberty, Resistance, Exclusion, Abdication, Deposition. These were ideas associated
at that time to the idea of a Whig, and supposed by every Whig to be incommunicable and inconsistent
with the Idea of a Tory Divine, hereditary, indefeasible, right,
lineal succession, passive obedience, prerogative, non-resistance, slavery, nay, and sometimes
potpourri too, were associated in many minds to the idea of a Tory, and deemed incommunicable
and inconsistent in the same manner with the idea of a Whig.
Dissertation on Parties, page 5 And if we compare these descriptions, we
We see that in the one party there was a desire to resist and decrease the coercive power
of the ruler over the subject, and in the other party to maintain or increase his coercive
power. This distinction in their aims, a distinction which transcends in meaning and importance
all other political distinctions, was displayed in their early doings.
Weak principles were exemplified in the heaviest corpus act and in the measure by which judges
were made independent of the Crown, in defeat of the Non-Resisting Test Bill, which proposed
for legislators and officials a compulsory oath that they would in no case resist the
King by Arms, and later they were exemplified in the Bill of Rights, framed to secure subjects
against monarchical aggressions. These acts had the same intrinsic nature. The principle
The principle of compulsory cooperation throughout social life was weakened by them, and the
principle of voluntary cooperation strengthened. That, at a subsequent period, the policy of
the party had the same general tendency, is well shown by a remark of Mr. Green concerning
the period of weak power after the death of Anne.
Before the fifty years of their rule had passed, Englishmen had forgotten that it was possible
or to persecute for differences of religion, or to put down the liberty of the press, or
to tamper with the administration of justice, or to rule without a parliament.
Short History, p.705
And now, passing over the war period which closed the last century and began this, during
which that extension of individual freedom previously gained was lost, and the retrograde
movement towards the social type proper to militancy was shown by all kinds of coercive
measures, from those which took by force the persons and property of citizens for war purposes
to those which suppressed public meetings and sought to gag the press, let us recall
the general characters of these changes effected by Whigs or liberals after the re-establishment
of peace permitted revival of the industrial regime and return to its appropriate type
Under growing Whig influence, there came repeal of the laws forbidding combinations among artisans, as well as of those which interfered with their freedom of travelling. There was the measure by which, under Whig pressure, dissenters were allowed to believe as they pleased without suffering certain civil penalties. And there was the Whig measure, carried out by Tories under compulsion, which enabled Catholics to profess their religion without losing part of their freedom.
The idea of liberty was extended by acts which forbade the buying of Negroes and the holding
of them in bondage. The East India Company's monopoly was abolished and trade with the
East made open to all. The political serfdom of the unrepresented was narrowed in areas
both by the Reform Bill and the Municipal Reform Bill, so that alike generally and locally,
The many were less under the coercion of the few.
Dissenters, no longer obliged to submit to the ecclesiastical form of marriage, were
made free to wed by a purely civil right.
Later came diminution and removal of restraints on the buying of foreign commodities and the
employment of foreign vessels and foreign sailors, and later still the removal of those burdens
on the press, which were originally imposed to hinder the diffusion of opinion.
And of all these changes, it is unquestionable that, whether made or not by liberals themselves,
they were made in conformity with principles professed and urged by liberals.
But why do I enumerate facts so well known to us all?
Simply because, as intimated at the outset, it seems needful to remind everybody what
liberalism was in the past, that they may perceive its unlikeliness to the so-called
Liberalism of the present. It would be inexcusable to name these various measures for the purposes
of pointing out the character common to them, were it not that in our day men have forgotten
their common character. They do not remember that, in one way or another, all these truly
liberal changes diminished compulsory cooperation throughout social life and increased voluntary
Cooperation.
They have forgotten that, in one direction or other, they diminished the range of governmental
authority and increased the area within which each citizen may act unchecked.
They have lost sight of the truth that in past times liberalism habitually stood for
individual freedom versus state coercion.
And now comes the inquiry.
How is it that liberals have lost sight of this?
How is it that liberalism, getting more and more into power, has grown more and more coercive
in its legislation? How is it that either directly through its own majorities or indirectly
through aid given in such cases to the majorities of its opponents, liberalism has to an increasing
extent adopted the policy of dictating the actions of citizens and, by consequence, diminishing
the range throughout which their actions remain free?
How are we to explain this spreading confusion of thought which has led it in pursuit of
what appears to be public good to invert the method by which in earlier days it achieved
public good? Unaccountable as at first sight this unconscious change of policy seems, we
shall find it has arisen quite naturally. Given the unanalytical thought ordinarily
From the lowest to the highest creatures, intelligence progressive by acts of discrimination, and it continues so to progress, among men, from the most ignorant to the most cultured. To class rightly, to put in the same
In the same group, things which are of essentially the same natures, and in other groups things of natures essentially different, is the fundamental condition to right guidance of actions.
Beginning with rudimentary vision, which gives warning that some large opaque body is passing near, just as closed eyes turn to the window, perceiving the shade caused by a hand put before them tellers of something moving in front.
The advance is to developed vision, which, by exactly appreciated combinations of forms,
colors and motions, identifies objects at great distances as prey or enemies, and so
makes it possible to improve the adjustments of conduct for securing food or evading death.
That progressing perception of differences and consequent greater correctness of classing
constitutes under one of its chief aspects the growth of intelligence, is equally seen
Undeveloped Intellectual Vision is just as indiscriminating and erroneous in its classings
Shelfish and under the sub-name Shelfish puts together crustaceans and mollusks, nay, which
goes further and regards as fish the cetacean mammals.
Partly because of the likeness in their modes of life as inhabiting the water, and partly
because of some general resemblance in their flavours, creatures that are in their essential
natures far more widely separated than a fish is from a bird, are associated in the same
Now, the general truth thus exemplified holds throughout those higher ranges of intellectual
vision concerned with things not presentable to the senses and, among others, such things
as political institutions and political measures. For, when thinking of these two, the results
of inadequate intellectual faculty, or inadequate culture of it, or both, are erroneous classings
and Consequent Erroneous Conclusions. Indeed, the liability to error is here much greater,
since the things with which the intellect is concerned do not admit of examination in
the same easy way. You cannot touch or see a political institution. It can be known only
by an effort of constructive imagination. Neither can you apprehend by physical perception
In a political measure, this no less requires a process of mental representation by which
its elements are put together in thought and the essential nature of the combination conceived.
Here, therefore, still more than in the cases above named, defective intellectual vision
is shown in grouping by external characters or extrinsic circumstances. How institutions
are wrongly classed from this cause, we see in the common notion that the Roman Republic
was a popular form of government. Look into the early days of the French revolutionists
who aimed at an ideal state of freedom, and you find that the political forms and deeds
of the Romans were their models, and even now a historian might be named who instances
the corruption of the Roman Republic as showing us what popular government leads to. Yet the
The resemblance between the institutions of the Romans and free institutions properly
so called was less than between a shark and a porpoise, as a resemblance of general external
form accompanying widely different internal structures. For the Roman government was that
of a small oligarchy within a larger oligarchy, the members of each being unchecked autocrats.
A society in which the relatively few men who had political power and were in a qualified
sense free were so many petty despots, holding not only slaves and dependents, but even children
in a bondage no less absolute than that in which they held their cattle, was, by its
intrinsic nature, more nearly allied to an ordinary despotism than to a society of citizens
politically equal.
According now to our special question, we may understand the kind of confusion in which
liberalism has lost itself, and the origin of those mistaken classings of political measures
which have misled it, classings as we shall see by conspicuous external traits instead
of by internal measures. For what in the popular apprehension and in the apprehension of those
One of the factors who affected them were the changes made by liberals in the past.
They were abolitions of grievances suffered by the people, or by portions of them.
This was the common trait they had which most impressed itself on men's minds.
They were mitigations of evil which had directly or indirectly been felt by large classes of
of Citizens as Causes to Misery or as Hindrances to Happinesses.
And since, in the minds of most, a rectified evil is equivalent to an achieved good, these
measures came to be thought of as so many positive benefits, and the welfare of the
many came to be conceived alike by liberal statesmen and liberal voters as the aim of
liberalism.
Hence the confusion. The gaining of a popular good, being the external conspicuous trait
common to liberal measures in earlier days, then in each case gained by a relaxation of
restraints, it has happened that popular good has come to be sought by liberals not as an
end to be indirectly gained by relaxations of restraints, but as the end to be directly
And now, having seen how this reversal of policy has arisen, or partial reversal, I
should say, for the recent Burials Act and the effort to remove all remaining religious
inequalities show continuance of the original policy in certain directions, let us proceed
to contemplate the extent to which it has been carried during recent times, and the
still greater extent to which the future will see it carried if current ideas and feelings
continue to predominate.
Before proceeding, it may be well to say that no reflections are intended on the motives
which prompted one after another of these various restraints and dictations. These motives
were doubtless, in nearly all cases, good. It must be admitted that the restrictions
placed by an Act of 1870 on the employment of women and children in Turkey-red dying
works were, in intention, no less philanthropic than those of Edward VI, which prescribed
the minimum time for which a journeyman should be retained.
Without question, the Seed Supply Ireland Act of 1880, which empowered guardians to
to buy seed for poor tenants, and then to see it properly planted, was moved by a desire
for public welfare no less great than that which in 1533 prescribed the number of sheep
a tenant might keep, or that of 1597 which commanded that decayed houses of husbandry
should be rebuilt.
Nobody will dispute that the various measures of late years taken for restricting the sale
have been taken as much with a view to public morals as were the measures taken of old for checking the evils of luxury, as for existence in the fourteenth century when diet as well as dress was restricted.
Everyone must see that the edicts issued by Henry VIII to prevent the lower classes from
playing dice, cards, bowls, etc., were not more prompted by desire for popular welfare
than were the acts passed of late to check gambling. Further, I do not intend here to
question the wisdom of these modern interferences which conservatives and liberals vie with
We will not now consider whether the plans of late adopted for preserving the lives of sailors are, or are not, more judicious than sweeping scotch-measure which, in the middle of the 15th century, prohibited captains from leaving harbour during the winter.
We will assume that there is no less sense in that clause of the Canal Boat Act, which
Which forbids an owner to board gratuitously the children of the boatman than there was
in the Spitalfields Act which, up till 1824, for the benefit of the artisans, forbade the
manufacturers to fix their factories more than ten miles from the royal exchange.
We exclude then these questions of philanthropic motive and wise judgment, taking both of them
for granted, and have here to concern ourselves solely with the compulsory nature of the measures
To bring the illustrations within Compass, let us commence with 1860, under the second
administration of Lord Palmerston. In that year, the restrictions of the Factories Act
were extended to bleaching and dyeing works. Authority was given to provide analysts of
There was an act providing for inspection of gasworks, as well as for fixing quality of gas and limiting price. There was the act which, in addition to further mine inspection, made it penal to employ boys under 12 not attending school and unable to read and write.
In 1861 occurred an extension of the compulsory provisions of the Factory Act to laceworks.
Power was given to pool or guardians, etc., to enforce vaccination. Local boards were
authorized to fix rates of hire for horses, ponies, mules, asses and boats, and certain
locally formed bodies had given to them powers of taxing the locality for rural drainage
and Irrigation Works and for Supplying Water to Cattle.
In 1862, an Act was passed for restricting the employment of women and children in open
air bleaching, and an Act for making illegal a coal mine with a single shaft, or with shafts
separated by less than a specified space, as well as an Act giving the Council of Medical
Education the exclusive right to publish a pharmacopoeia, the price of which is to be
In 1863 came the extension of compulsory vaccination to Scotland and also to Ireland. There came
the empowering of certain boards to borrow money repayable from the local rates, to employ
and to pay those out of work. There came the authorizing of town authorities to take possession
of neglected ornamental spaces and rate the inhabitants for their support. There came
and the Bake Houses Regulation Act, which, besides specifying minimal age of employees
occupied between certain hours, prescribed periodical lime washing, three coats of paint
when painted, and cleaning with hot water and soap at least once in six months. And
there came also an Act giving a magistrate authority to decide on the wholesomeness or
unwholesomeness of food brought before him by an inspector. Of compulsory legislation
and dating from 1864, may be named an extension of the Factories Act to various additional
trades, including regulations for cleansing and ventilation, and specifying of certain
employees in match works, but they might not take meals on the premises except in the wood
cutting places. Also, they were passed a Chimney Sweepers Act, an act for further regulating
the sale of beer in Ireland, an act for compulsory testing of cables and anchors, an act extending
in the Public Works Act of 1863 and the Contagious Diseases Act, which last gave the police in
specified places powers which, in respect of certain classes of women, abolished sundry
of those safeguards to individual freedom established in past times. The year 1865 witnessed
further provision for the reception and temporary relief of wanderers at the cost of rate payers,
Another Public House Closing Act and an Act Making Compulsory Regulations for Extinguishing
Fires in London. Then, under the Ministry of Lord John Russell in 1866, have to be named
an Act to regulate cattle sheds etc. in Scotland, giving local authorities power to inspect
sanitary conditions and fix the numbers of cattle, an Act forcing hop growers to label
their bags with the year and place of growth and the true weight, and giving police powers
of Search, an Act to facilitate the building of lodging houses in Ireland and providing
for regulation of the inmates, a Public Health Act under which there is regulation of lodging
houses and limitation of occupants with inspection and directions for lime washing, etc., and
a Public Libraries Act giving local powers by which a majority can tax a minority for
their books.
Passing now to the legislation under the first ministry of Mr. Gladstone, we have in 1869
the establishment of state telegraphy, with the accompanying interdict on telegraphing
through any other agency. We have the empowering a Secretary of State to regulate hired convences
in London. We have further and more stringent regulations to prevent cattle diseases from
spreading, another Beer House Regulation Act and a Seabirds Preservation Act ensuring
and Greater Mortality of Fish. In 1870, we have a law authorizing the Board of Public
Works to make advances for landlords' improvements and for purchase by tenants. We have the Act
which enables the Education Department to form school boards which shall purchase sites
for schools and may provide free schools supported by local rates, and enabling school boards
to pay a child's fees, to compel parents to send their children, etc.
We have a further Factories and Workshops Act, making, among other restrictions, some
on the employment of women and children in fruit-preserving and fish-curing works.
In 1871, we met with an amended Merchant Shipping Act, directing officers of the Board of Trade
to record the draft of seagoing vessels leaving port.
There is another Factory and Workshops Act, making further restrictions. There is a Peddlers
Act, inflicting penalties for hawking without a certificate, and limiting the district within
which the certificate holds, as well as giving the police power to search peddlers' packs.
And there are further measures for enforcing vaccination. The year 1872 had, among other
The act is one which makes it illegal to take for hire more than one child to nurse unless
in a house registered by the authorities who prescribe the number of infants to be received.
It had a licensing act interdicting sale of spirits to those apparently under 16 and it
had another merchant shipping act establishing an annual survey of passenger steamers.
One in 1873 was passed the Agricultural Children's Act, which makes it penal for a farmer to
employ a child who has neither certificate of elementary education nor of certain prescribed
school attendances. There was passed a Merchant Shipping Act requiring on each vessel a scale
showing draft and giving the Board of Trade power to fix the number of boats and life-saving
appliances to be carried.
We turn now to liberal lawmaking under the present ministry. We have, in 1880, a law
which forbids conditional advance notes in payment of sailors' wages, also a law which
dictates certain arrangements for the safe carriage of grain cargos, also a law increasing
local coercion over parents to send their children to school. In 1881 comes legislation
to prevent trawling over clam beds and bait beds, and an interdict making it impossible
In 1882, the Board of Trade was authorized to grant licenses to generate and sell electricity,
and municipal bodies were enabled to levy rates for electric lighting. Further exemptions
from ratepayers were authorized for facilitating more accessible baths and wash houses, and
local authorities were empowered to make bylaws for securing the decent lodging of persons
of such legislation during 1883 may be named the Cheap Trains Act, which, partly by taxing the nation to the extent of £400,000 a year, in the shape of relinquished passenger duty, and partly at the cost of railway proprietors, still further cheapens travelling for workmen.
The Board of Trade, through the Railway Commissioners, being empowered to ensure sufficiently good
and frequent accommodation. Again, there is the Act, which, under the penalty of £10
for disobedience, forbids the payment of wages to workmen at or within public houses. There
is another, Factory and Workshops Act, commanding inspection of white leadworks, to see that
that there are provided overalls, respirators, baths, assiduated drinks, etc.
and of bakehouses regulating times of employment in both, and prescribing in detail some constructions
for the last, which are to be kept in a condition satisfactory to the inspectors.
But we are far from forming an adequate conception if we look only at the compulsory legislation
in which has actually been established of late years.
We must look also at that which is advocated and which threatens to be far more sweeping
in range and stringent in character.
We have lately had a cabinet minister, one of the most advanced liberals, so called,
who poo-poos the plans of the late government for improving industrial dwellings as so much
tinkering, and contends for effectual coercion to be exercised over owners of small houses,
over landowners and over ratepayers.
Here is another cabinet minister who, addressing his constituents,
speaks slightingly of the doings of philanthropic societies and religious
bodies to help the poor,
and says that the whole of the people of this country ought to look upon this
work as being their own work.
That is to say, some extensive government measure is called for.
Again, we have a radical Member of Parliament who leads a large and powerful body, aiming
with annually increasing promises of success, to enforce sobriety by giving a local magistrate
powers to prevent freedom of exchange in respect of certain commodities. Regulation of the
hours of labour for certain classes, which has been made more and more general by successive
extensions of the Factories Act, is likely now to be made still more general. A measure
There is to be proposed bringing the employees in all shops under such regulation.
There is a rising demand, too, that education shall be made gratis, i.e., tax-supported,
for all.
The payment of school fees is beginning to be denounced as a wrong.
The State must take the whole burden.
Moreover, it is proposed by many that the State, regarded as an undoubtedly competent
The first judge of what constitutes good education for the poor shall undertake also to prescribe good education for the middle classes, shall stamp the children of these too after a state pattern concerning the goodness of which they have no more doubt than that the Chinese had when they fixed theirs.
is the endowment of research of late energetically urged.
Already the government gives every year the sum of £4,000 for this purpose to be distributed
through the Royal Society, and, in the absence of those who have strong motives for resisting
the pressure of the interested, backed by those they easily persuade, it may by and
by establish that paid priesthood of science long ago advocated by Sir David Brewster.
Once more, plausible proposals are made that there should be organized a system of compulsory
insurance by which men during their early lives shall be forced to provide for the time
when they will be incapacitated.
Nor does enumeration of these further measures of coercive rule, looming on us near at hand
or in the distance, complete the account.
Nothing more than cursory allusion has yet been made to that accompanying compulsion
which takes the form of increased taxation, general and local, partly for defraying the
costs of carrying out these ever-multiplying sets of regulations, each of which requires
an additional staff of officers, and partly to meet the outlay for new public institutions
such as board schools, free libraries, public museums, baths and wash houses, recreation
grounds etc.
Federal rates are year after year increased, as the general taxation is increased by grants
for education and to the departments of science and art, etc. Every one of these involves
further coercion, restricts still more the freedom of the citizen, for the implied address
accompanying every additional exaction is, hitherto you have been free to spend this
portion of your earnings in any way which pleased you, hereafter you shall not be free
Thus, either directly or indirectly, and in most cases both at once, the citizen is at
each further stage in the growth of this compulsory legislation deprived of some liberty which
he previously had.
Such then are the doings of the party which claims the name of liberal, and which calls
itself liberal as being the advocate of extended freedom.
I doubt not that many a member of the party has read the preceding section with impatience,
wanting as he does to point out an immense oversight which he thinks destroys the validity
of the argument.
You forgot, he wishes to say, the fundamental difference between the power which, in the
past, established those restraints that liberalism abolished and the power which, in the present,
establishes the restraints you call anti-liberal.
You forget that the one was an irresponsible power while the other is a responsible power.
You forget that if by the recent legislation of liberals people are variously regulated,
the body which regulates them is of their own creating and has their warrant for its
acts.
My answer is that I have not forgotten this difference, but am prepared to contend that
the differences in large measure irrelevant to the issue.
In the first place, the real issue is whether the lives of citizens are more interfered
with than they were, not the nature of the agency which interferes with them.
Take a simpler case.
A member of a trades union has joined others in establishing an organization of a purely
representative character.
By it he is compelled to strike if a majority so disliked.
He is forbidden to accept work save under the conditions they dictate.
He is prevented from profiting by his superior ability or energy to the extent he might do,
were it not for their interdict.
He cannot disobey without abandoning those pecuniary benefits of the organization for
which he has subscribed, and bringing on himself the persecution and perhaps violence of his
fellows.
Is he any the less coerced, because the body coercing him is one which he had an equal
voice with the rest informing?
In the second place, if it be objected that the analogy is faulty, since the governing
body of a nation, to which as protector of the national life and interest, all must submit
under penalty of social disorganization, has a far higher authority over citizens than
and the government of any private organization can have over its members, then the reply
is that, granting the difference, the answer made continues valid. If men use their liberty
in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any less slaves? If people
by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism
are the coercive edict issued by him to be regarded as legitimate because they are the ultimate outcome of their own votes as well it might be argued that the East African who breaks a spear in another's presence that he may so become bondsman to him still retains his liberty because he freely chose his master finally if any not without marks of irritation as I can imagine repudiate
and say that there is no true parallelism between the relation of people to government where an irresponsible single ruler has been permanently elected, and the relation where a responsible representative body is maintained and from time to time re-elected.
Then there comes the ultimate reply, an altogether heterodox reply by which most will be greatly astonished.
This reply is that these multitudinous restraining acts are not defensible on the ground that
they proceed from a popularly chosen body, for that the authority of a popularly chosen
body is no more to be regarded as an unlimited authority than the authority of a monarch,
and that as true liberalism in the past disputed the assumption of a monarch's unlimited authority,
so true liberalism in the present will dispute the assumption of unlimited parliamentary
Of this, however, more are known. Here, I merely indicate it is an ultimate answer.
Meanwhile, it suffices to point out that until recently, just as of old, true liberalism
was shown by its acts to be moving towards the theory of a limited parliamentary authority.
All these abolitions of restraints over religious beliefs and observances, over exchange and
In the same way that the abandonment of sumptuary laws or of laws forbidding this or that kind of amusement, of laws dictating modes of farming and many others of like meddling nature, which took place in early days, was an implied admission that a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state, a state,
ought not to interfere in such matters, so those removals of hindrances to
individual activities of one or other kind, which the liberalism of the last
generation effected, were practical confessions that in these directions too
the sphere of governmental action should be narrowed. And this recognition of the
proprietary of restricting government action was a preparation for restricting
One of the most familiar political truths is that, in the course of social evolution, usage precedes law, and that when usage has been well established, it becomes law by receiving authoritative endorsement and a defined form.
Manifestly then, liberalism in the past, by its practice of limitation, was preparing the way for the principle of limitation.
But returning from these more general considerations to the special question, I emphasize the reply
that the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured not by the nature of the governmental
machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the relative paucity of the
restraints it imposes on him, and that, whether this machinery is or is not one he shared
in Making, its actions are not of the kind proper to liberalism if they increase such
restraints beyond those which are needful for preventing him from directly or indirectly
aggressing on his fellows. Needful, that is, for maintaining the liberties of his fellows
against his invasions of them, restraints which are therefore to be distinguished as
Probably, however, the liberal and still more the subspecies radical, who more than any other, in these latter days, seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view, he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able, will continue to protest, knowing that his aim is popular benefit of some kind to be achieved in some way, and believes that it is the right thing to do.
Believing that the Tory is, contrary-wise, prompted by class interest and the desire
to maintain class power, he will regard it as palpable we have served to group him as
one of the same genus, and will scorn the reasoning used to prove that he belongs to
it.
Perhaps an analogy will help him to see its validity.
If away in the Far East, where personal government is the only form of government known, he heard
from the Inhabitants an account of a struggle by which they had deposed a cruel and vicious
despot and put in his place one whose acts proved his desire for their welfare, if, after
listening to their self-gratulations, he told them that they had not essentially changed
the nature of their government, he would greatly astonish them, and probably he would have
difficulty in making them understand that the substitution of a benevolent despot for
or a malevolent despot, still left the government a despotism.
Similarly, with Toryism as rightly conceived, standing as it does for coercion by the state
versus the freedom of the individual, Toryism remains Toryism, whether it extends this coercion
for selfish or unselfish reasons.
As certainly as the despot is still a despot, whether his motives for arbitrary rule are
Whether good or bad, so certainly is the Tory still a Tory, whether he has egoistic or
altruistic motives for using state power to restrict the liberty of the citizens beyond
the degree required for maintaining the liberties of other citizens. The altruistic Tory, as
well as the egoistic Tory, belongs to the genus Tory, though he forms a new species
of the Genus, and both stand in distinct contrast with the liberal as defined in the days when
liberals were rightly so called and when the definition was, one who advocates greater
freedom from restraint, especially in political institutions.
Thus, then, is justified the paradox I set out with.
As we have seen, Toryism and liberalism originally emerged, the one from militancy and the other
The other from industrialism.
The one stood for the regime of status and the other for the regime of contract.
The one for that system of compulsory cooperation which accompanies the legal inequality of
classes and the other for that voluntary cooperation which accompanies their legal equality.
And beyond all question, the early acts of the two parties were, respectively, for the
maintenance of agencies which affect this compulsory cooperation and for the weakening
Manifestly, the implication is that, in so far as it has been extending the system of compulsion, what is now called liberalism, is a new form of taurism.
How truly this is so, we shall still see more clearly on looking at the facts, the other side upwards, which we will presently do.
Note, by sundry newspapers which noticed this article, it is clear that this is not the case.
Note
By sundry newspapers which noticed this article when it was originally published, the meaning
of the above paragraphs was supposed to be that liberals and Tories have changed places.
This however is by no means the implication. A new species of Tory may arise without disappearance
When saying, above, that in our days conservatives and liberals vie with one another in multiplying
interferences, I clearly implied the belief that while liberals have taken to coercive
legislation, conservatives have not abandoned it. Nevertheless, it is true that the laws
made by liberals are so greatly increasing the compulsions and restraints exercised over
for Citizens, that among conservatives who suffer from this aggressiveness, there is
growing up a tendency to resist it.
Proof is furnished by the fact that the Liberty and Property Defense League, largely consisting
of conservatives, has taken for its motto individualism versus socialism, so that if
the present drift of things continues, it may by and by really happen that the Tories
These will be defenders of liberties which the liberals, in pursuit of what they think
popular welfare, trample underfoot.