59Q POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ish disposition than the conception of government as a power de- 

 signed to prevent aggression at home and abroad. Such a concep- 

 tion has been contemptuously called " the police conception." " Who 

 would ever fight or die for a policeman? " cried an opponent of it, 

 trying to reduce an adversary to ignominious silence. It was not 

 sufficient to reply with the counter question, " Who would not die 

 for justice? " and thus expose the fallacy of the crushing interroga- 

 tion. " No one," came the retort, " could care for a country that 

 only protected him against swindlers, robbers, and murderers. To 

 merit his allegiance and to fire his devotion, she must do more than 

 that; she must help to make his life easier, pleasanter, and nobler." 

 Accordingly, the Government undertakes for him a thousand duties 

 that it has no business with. It builds schools and asylums for him ; 

 it protects him against disease, and, if needful, furnishes him with 

 physicians and medicines; it sees that he has good beef and pork, 

 pure milk, and sound fruit; it refuses to permit him to drink what 

 he pleases, though it be only the cheaper grades of tea, nor to eat 

 chemical substitutes for butter and cheese, except they bear author- 

 ized marks; it transports his mails, supplies him with garden seeds, 

 instructs him in the care of fowls, cattle, and horses, shows him how 

 to build roads, and tells him what the weather will be; it insures 

 him not only against incompetent plumbers, barbers, undertakers, 

 horseshoers, accountants, and physicians, but also against the com- 

 petition of the pauper labor of foreign countries; it creates innu- 

 merable offices and commissions to look after the management of his 

 affairs, particularly to stand between him and the " rapacity " of the 

 corporations organized to supply the necessaries of life at the lowest 

 cost; it builds fleets of cruisers and vast coast fortifications to 

 frighten away enemies that never think of assailing him, and to in- 

 spire them with the same respect for " the flag " that he is supposed 

 to feel. Indeed, there is hardly a thing, except simple justice, cheap 

 and speedy, that it does not provide to fill him with a love of his 

 country, and to make him ready to immolate himself upon her altars. 

 But I can not repeat with too much emphasis that every ex- 

 penditure beyond that required to maintain order and to enforce 

 justice, and every limitation of freedom beyond that needful to pre- 

 serve equal freedom, is an aggression. In no wise except in method 

 does it differ from the aggressions of war. In war the property of 

 an enemy is taken or destroyed without his consent. In case of his 

 capture his conduct is shaped in disregard of his wishes. The seizure 

 of a citizen's property in the form of taxes for a purpose that he does 

 not approve, and the regulation of any part of his conduct not viola- 

 tive of the rights of his neighbors, are precisely the same. If he 

 is forbidden to carry the mails and thus earn a living, his freedom 



