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deeply-graven laws, makes statesmen recant and puts prophets to the blush, buries cherished customs, shelves precedents, and which, before men are yet conscious of the fact, has wrought a revolution in all things, and filled the world with a higher life. Always toward perfection is the mighty movement-toward a complete development and a more unmixed good; subordinating in its universality all petty irregularities and fallings back, as the curvature of the earth subordinates mountains and valleys. Even in evils, the student learns to recognize only a struggling beneficence. But, above all, he is struck with the inherent sufficingness of things, and with the complex simplicity of those principles by which every defect is being remedied-principles that show themselves alike in the self-adjustment of planetary perturbations, and in the healing of a scratched finger-in the balancing of social systems, and in the increased sensitiveness of a blind man's ear-in the adaptation of prices to produce, and in the acclimatization of a plant. Day by day he sees a further beauty. Each new fact illustrates more clearly some recognized law, or discloses some inconceived completeness: contemplation thus perpetually discovering to him a higher harmony, and cherishing in him a deeper faith.

And now, in the midst of his admiration and his awe, the student shall suddenly see some flippant red-tapist get upon his legs and tell the world how he is going to put a patch upon nature! Here is a man who, in the presence of all the wonders that encompass him, dares to announce that he and certain of his colleagues have laid their heads together and found out a way to improve upon the Divine arrangements! Scarcely an idea have these meddlers got of what underlies the facts with which they propose to deal; as you shall soon find on sounding their philosophy: and yet, could they carry out their preten

sions, we should see them self-appointed nurses to the uni verse! They have so little faith in the laws of things, and so much faith in themselves, that, were it possible, they would chain earth and sun together, lest centripetal force should fail! Nothing but a parliament-made agency can be depended upon; and only when this infinitelycomplex humanity of ours has been put under their ingenious regulations, and provided for by their supreme intelligence, will the world become what it ought to be! Such, in essence, is the astounding creed of these creationmenders.

9. Consider it then in what light we may-morally or scientifically, with reference to its practicableness, or as a question of political prudence, or even in its bearings upon religious faith-we find this theory, that a government ought to undertake other offices besides that of protector, to be an untenable theory. It has been shown that if the maintaining of rights be regarded as the special function of the state, the state cannot fulfil any other function without a partial loss of power to fulfil its special one. When, from another point of view, the state is looked upon as an aid to adaptation, we still find that it cannot exceed its duty of guarding men's liberties, without becoming a hindrance to adaptation, instead of an aid. It turns out that to abolish the limit of legislative interposition now contended for, is in fact to abolish all limits whatever-is to give the civil power a field of action to which no bounds can be fixed, save in some arbitrary and utterly unphilosophical way. Moreover, even could cer tain supplementary affairs, considered fit for government supervision, be duly distinguished from the rest, there would still be the fact that all experience shows gov ernment to be an incompetent manager of such sup plementary affairs.

It is further urged, that the sys

EXTENSION OF THE ARGUMENT IN DETAIL. 325

tem of extended official control is bad, because unfavourable to social stability. And, finally, that system is repudiated, as involving an absurd and even impious presumption.

Such, then, are the general arguments brought forward to prove that whilst the state ought to protect, it ought to do nothing more than protect. By the abstract thinker they may perhaps be deemed conclusive. There are others, however, with whom they will weigh comparatively little; and, for the conviction of these, it will be needful to examine in detail each of the several cases in which legisla tive superintendence is commonly advocated. Let us now proceed to do this.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE REGULATION OF COMMERCE.

§ 1. Arrangements which alter the natural course of trade are of two kinds; they may be classed as either artificial stimuli or artificial restraints-bounties or restrictions.

Of bounties must here be said specially what was said in the last chapter of factitious advantages generally; namely, that a government cannot give them without indirectly reversing its function. Not being requisite for the due maintenance of the citizen's rights, the taking away of his property for the purpose of encouraging certain branches of production, would be wrong even were collateral benefits given in exchange; and as, instead of affording him collateral benefits, the commercial derange ments consequent upon it put additional limits to the ex

ercise of his faculties, such a measure is doubly wrong Now that the faith in mercantile bribes is nearly extinct, it is needless to enforce this abstract inference by any supplementary reasoning.

Of restrictions it scarcely needs saying that they are even more directly inequitable than bounties. Deducible as it is from the law of equal freedom, the right of exchange is as sacred as any other right (Chap. XIII.), and exists as much between members of different nations as between members of the same nation. Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race. You may put men on opposite sides of a river or a chain of mountains; may else part them by a tract of salt water; may give them, if you like, distinct languages; and may even colour their skins differently; but you cannot change their fundamental relationships. Originating as these do in the facts of man's constitution, they are unaltered by the accidents of external condition. The moral law is cosmopolite-is no respecter of nationalities: and between men who are the antipodes of each other, either in locality or any thing else, there must still exist the same balance of rights as though they were next-door neighbours in all things.

Hence, in putting a veto upon the commercial intercourse of two nations, or in putting obstacles in the way of that intercourse, a government trenches upon men's liberties of action; and by so doing directly reverses its function. To secure for each man the fullest freedom to exercise his faculties, compatible with the like freedom of all others, we find to be the state's duty. Now trade prohibitions and trade restrictions not only do not secure this freedom, but they take it away. So that in enforcing them the state is transformed from a maintainer of rights into a violater of rights. If it be criminal in a civil power commissioned to shield us from murder to turn murderer

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itself; if it be criminal in it to play the thief, though set to keep off thieves; then must it be criminal in it to deprive men, in any way, of liberty to pursue the objects of desire, when it was appointed to insure them that liberty. Whether it kills, or robs, or enslaves, or shackles by trade regulations, its guilt is alike in kind, and differs only in degree. In one extreme it wholly destroys the power to exercise the faculties; in the other it does this partially. And in strict ethics the same species of condemnation must be visited upon it in both cases.

§ 2. Not a few will be startled by this view of the matter. Let such reflect awhile upon the antecedents and associations of this trade-ruling. They will find, on doing so, that it is allied in both origin and practice to all other forms of wrong. More than once it has been pointed out, that as unjust customs and institutions derive their viciousness from a moral defect in the people living under them, they must be uniformly pervaded by that viciousness-that as social laws, creeds, and arrangements consist merely of solidified character, the same character will be shown in all the social laws, creeds, and arrangements which coexist; and, further, that any process of amelioration will affect them simultaneously. This truth was amply illustrated (pp. 180 and 198). We saw that ty ranny in forms of government, tyranny in the conduct of lord to serf, tyranny in religious organizations and discipline, tyranny in the matrimonial relationship, and tyranny in the treatment of children, regularly flourished together and regularly decreased at a like rate. In the same category we must now put-tyranny in commercial laws. Sinking those minor irregularities which pervade all nature's processes, we shall find that from the days when exportation was a capital crime, down to our own freetrade era, there has been a constant ratio kept between