444 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



national life and interests, all must submit under penalty of social 

 disorganization, has a far higher authority over citizens than the gov- 

 ernment 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 the less slaves ? If people by a ple- 

 biscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the 

 despotism was of their own making ? Are the coercive edicts issued 

 by him to be regarded as legitimate because they are the ultimate 

 outcome of their own votes ? As well might it be argued that the 

 savage who breaks a spear in another's presence that he may so be- 

 come 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 

 protest against this reasoning, 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 hetero- 

 dox 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 unlim- 

 ited authority, so true Liberalism in the present will dispute the as- 

 sumption of unlimited parliamentary authority. Of this, however, 

 more anon. Here I merely indicate it as 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 toward the theory 

 of a limited parliamentary authority. All these abolitions of the re- 

 straints over religious beliefs and observances, over exchange and tran- 

 sit, over trade combinations and the traveling of artisans, over the 

 publication of opinions, theological or political, etc., etc., were tacit 

 recognitions of the propriety for limitation. In the same way that the 

 final abandonment of sumptuary laws, 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 the state ought not to interfere in such mat- 

 ters ; so were those removals of hindrances to individual activities of 

 one or other kind, which the Liberalism of the last generation effected, 

 practical confessions that in these directions, too, the sphere of govern- 

 mental action should be narrowed. And this recognition of the pro- 

 priety of narrowing governmental action was a preparation for nar- 

 rowing it in theory. One of the most familiar political truths is that, 

 in the course of social evolution, usage precedes law, and that, when 



