STATE INTERFERENCE IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS. 199 



short time nobody would have more than four hundred pounds 

 a year, and the sources of taxation would dry up just as people 

 had become used to and dependent on governmental assistance. 

 [Laughter.] The general argument may be summarized in the 

 favorite phraseology of the day. The utility of every increment 

 of governmental work rapidly diminishes, and the disutility of 

 every increment of taxation rapidly increases. The classical 

 economists maintain that even if the state could do something for 

 individuals as cheaply and effectively as they could do it for 

 themselves, it is in general better to trust to individual effort. 

 The decisive consideration is the effect on the character and ener- 

 gies of the people. Self-reliance, independence, liberty these 

 were the old watchwords not state reliance, dependence, and 

 obedience. In the matter of pauperism, for example, they teach 

 us to distinguish between the immediate effects of relief which 

 may be beneficial and the effects of reliance on that relief which 

 may be disastrous. They are bold enough to maintain that the 

 condition of life of the dependent pauper should not be made 

 by aids and allowances better than that of the independent 

 laborer. They insist on the great historical distinction between 

 the sturdy rogues and vagabonds who can work and will not 

 and the impotent poor, the poor in very deed, who can not sup- 

 port themselves. They look upon the payment of poor rates as 

 they look upon other forms of taxation namely, as the lesser of 

 two evils ; they do not try to persuade themselves and other peo- 

 ple that it is a duty which is essentially pleasant. If Christian 

 charity realized a tithe of its ideal there would be no need for 

 relief on the part of the state. It does not take ten ants to relieve 

 another ant, and in this land of ours there are more than ten pro- 

 fessed Christians to every pauper. To the student I would say, 

 political economy has a vast literature, and you will not find all 

 the good concentrated in the last marginal increment ; you must 

 master the old before you can appreciate the new ; a portion of 

 truth just rediscovered for the hundredth time by some amateur 

 is not of such value as a body of doctrines that have been devel- 

 oped for more than a century by economists of repute. And to 

 the legislator I would say, vaster than the literature of political 

 economy is the economic experience of nations ; the lessons to be 

 learned from the multitudinous experiments of the past can never 

 become antiquated, for they have revealed certain broad features 

 of human character that you can no more disregard than the 

 vital functions of the human body. Just as Harvey did not in- 

 vent but discovered the circulation of the blood, so Adam Smith 

 did not invent but discovered the system of natural liberty. And 

 nothing has been better established than the position that legisla- 

 tion which neglects to take account of the liberties of individuals 



