straints, but as an end to be directly gained." There is a philosophical difficulty here which needs to be cleared up. I do not see why, because an end is sometimes indirectly pursued, it ceases to be an end, and becomes merely "an external conspicuous trait." Least of all do I see how Mr. Spencer can logically hold such a position. He considers pleasure to be the ultimate end of conduct; and yet I suppose he would allow, like Mill, that it is an end which can only be gained by not being directly pursued. should be very ready to admit that pleasure is "an external conspicuous trait," which Mr. Spencer and others have mistaken for the end-a conclusion which would seem to follow, if Mr. Spencer's argument here is correct. The ultimate end of all human effort may be indirectly pursued, and the popular, or rather the common, good is this end, while pleasure is not.

I

But let us leave this philosophical question for the present. The unsophisticated mind is certainly a little surprised to learn that the welfare of the people is only "an external trait." I had always thought that, when men fought for liberty, and checked the tyranny of kings and potentates, they did it for the sake of the common weal, and not for the sake of carrying out Mr. Spencer's theory about the negatively regulative function of the State. Sometimes

the common welfare has been promoted by resisting and restraining bad interference, sometimes by instituting Government action to check evils that have grown up through past bad interference or through long-continued neglect. There is a time to break down and a time to build up; and the same men may have to do both. If Mr. Spencer came one day on a company of workmen demolishing a large building, and some days afterwards found them erecting something else on the same place, he would say to them: "You have mistaken your work. Your business is to make the way clear for individuals like myself to walk about in as we choose." Some one might perhaps answer him: "The other day we were pulling down an old palace and an old prison; to-day we are building a school and a library." There is no necessary inconsistency in the same party having struggled against protection, monopolies, and privileges, which favoured a few individuals at the cost. of the vast mass of the people, and now struggling to protect individuals who are not wise enough nor strong enough to protect themselves against the selfishness of those whom past legislation, or past neglect, has allowed to acquire an undue power over them. At the same time there does, on the surface, appear to be a certain inconsistency; and this appear

ance deters many from lending a helping hand in the cause which they really have at heart. Those who abolished the Corn Laws kicked at first vehemently against the Factory Acts. The view that the main work of Liberalism is to diminish the amount of Government action is still widely spread in this country. It is a view which seems to fit in extremely well with the ideas, or at least with the language, of the average Englishman. Of this we may find several explanations.

In a country where political freedom has been won, not by a sudden revolution transferring power from one class to another, but by a very long and very gradual series of struggles between the non-privileged and the privileged, or between the more privileged and the less privileged classes, this long struggle has left as an inheritance a permanent jealousy of rulers, a ready-made disposition to suspect and resent Government interference. The struggle against the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts has made an indelible impression on English political thinking. This we may call the Whig tradition, in which we include the Puritan tradition. The best of the Puritans fought for the liberty of individual conscience; and nearly all of them, when they could not have their own way, wished to be left alone in matters of religion.

Secondly, besides this older Whig tradition, there is the more recent tradition from the struggles of the present century-the long fight against State interference, especially with trade, but also with freedom of the press, of religious belief, of association, etc. The struggle of the seventeenth century was mainly against unconstitutional and arbitrary kinds of Government. That of the first half of this century has been against mischievous kinds of Government action. The opponents of some particular kind of bad Government interference often used the unnecessarily wide premiss, "All Government interference is bad." The advocates of free trade tended to apply the phrase Laissez faire in all matters. It became the dogma of the old-fashioned Radical.1 Thirdly, there is the patriotic feeling that we are not as other men are, the national pride in the English system of leaving people to do things for themselves, and the prejudice against everything that any one can call "continental bureaucracy." Now most undoubtedly we have a great gain, not in the

1

Cp. an article in The Times of Feb. 15th, 1883, quoted by Lord Pembroke in his pamphlet, Liberty and Socialism, p. 29, according to which "one of the chief notes of instructed Liberalism was [a generation ago] the dogma, that the best Government is that which interferes least with social affairs."

mere absence of Government action, but in the habit of free association; many of the advantages however that we are apt to ascribe to absence of Government interference are really due to the absence of centralisation—a very different thing. A highly differentiated and decentralised Government is not identical with no Government at all.1 French and German

writers often talk with admiration of our "selfgovernment," and we may feel flattered by the fact that they have borrowed our word. But we know in our inmost hearts how defective our local government is (even in spite of recent legislation), how chaotic its condition, how much more of it we need, and how much more controlled it often requires to be. Many good measures are nearly inoperative through the remissness of local bodies. On the other hand, the central Government labours under the burden of local details; and much decentralisation is urgently needed.

1

Cp. Sir F. Pollock, History of the Science of Politics (London, 1890), p. 123: "The minimisers [of the State's function] appear not to distinguish sufficiently the action of the State in general from its centralised action. There are many things which the State cannot do in the way of central government, or not effectually, but which can be very well done by the action of local governing bodies. But this is a question between the direct and the delegated activity of the State, not between State action and individual enterprise."