SOCIAL REGULATION 273 



a case puts himself into the hands of some body of men whose will 

 is in Rousseau's sense general as regards him, and partial as regards 

 the rest of the community. 



Then man is only in a small degree a rational animal, and is mainly 

 a creature of suggestion. He takes his opinions largely from the 

 society of which he is a part. In fact he does not so much join a 

 church, for example, or a political party, because he agrees with its 

 objects, as he accepts its policy because he belongs to it. An asso- 

 ciation becomes indeed an end in itself, and thus a body may act in 

 a way that the bulk of the individuals who compose it would not act 

 if left to themselves. 



In the third place, a large body of men has power to affect the 

 destinies and curtail the freedom of action of other people in a way 

 that individuals could not do. Even without acquiring an actual 

 monopoly, a trust or a huge corporation can drive smaller rivals 

 out of business, or force conditions of labor or trade, or affect the 

 method of conducting other distinct trades, when smaller concerns 

 would have no such power. Moreover, they can do it without resort- 

 ing to any conduct that would be illegal, oppressive, or even improper 

 in the case of individuals. The same thing is true of trade-unions, 

 or any other combinations of men on a large scale. To take a most 

 familiar illustration : An individual may buy or sell where he pleases, 

 and the motives for his choice are nobody's affair; but if a large 

 number of men agree not to trade with a certain person it becomes 

 a " boycott," and a terrible engine of compulsion. 



It follows that formidable combinations stand in a peculiar posi- 

 tion. Their acts have different effects from those of individuals. 

 Their moral rights and duties are not the same, and they must to 

 some extent be subject to peculiar laws. The difficulty in dealing 

 with them comes in drawing the line between freedom of combina- 

 tion and the liberty of the individual. The question - - in some 

 ways akin to the problem of reconciling order and progress, which 

 has at times occupied so much attenion in Europe will loom large 

 in the twentieth century. 



While dealing with voluntary associations it is interesting to 

 observe how far we have already gone in solving an important 

 problem arising out of their development. I refer to the case of 

 political parties. The greatest contribution to the art of politics 

 in the nineteenth century is expressed in the phrase " Her Majesty's 

 Opposition." It implies a recognition that organized bodies of men 

 who are loyal to the state and to the established form of government, 

 but who are opposed to the administration in power, have a right to 

 exist and to carry on an active propaganda. Germs of the modern 

 party system can, no doubt, be traced farther back in some countries, 

 but the system cannot be said to have developed fully until the nine- 



