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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tomed to be imposed upon by words, 

 that both affirmations may be admitted 

 without verification, particularly if they 

 are maintained by persons of great 

 wealth who go about in their carriages 

 begging alms of other people. . . . Estab- 

 lished for a quite different purpose, the 

 government has no competence in in- 

 dustrial matters, and can only act therein 

 upon the advice of others. This advice 

 is nearly always interested and unjust." 



How entirely we concur in these re- 

 marks has already been indicated. If 

 any one can show us that we are wrong 

 in viewing this whole question in a 

 moral light, and pronouncing for that 

 theory of government which seems to 

 us most favorable to public and private 

 morality, we shall be prepared to con- 

 sider it in other aspects, and listen with 

 patience to the argumentations of those 

 who would fain persuade us that re- 

 strictions on the activity and free initi- 

 ative of individual citizens make for the 

 strength and prosperity of the people as 

 a whole, and that the national wealth 

 is increased when goods are produced 

 in the country at relatively high cost, 

 which might be procured from abroad 

 at relatively low cost. 



The above remarks apply to tariff 

 legislation, but individual liberty is 

 abridged in many other ways that seem 

 to us essentially wrong. That the mem- 

 bers of a particular profession should 

 have laws passed in their special inter- 

 est, and should be empowered to decide 

 who may and who may not enter into 

 competition with them, is, we think, a 

 violation at once of justice and of lib- 

 erty. The worst of these things is, that 

 a public motive is always alleged for 

 what is in the main, if not exclusively, 

 the outcome of private greed or jeal- 

 ousy. It would scarcely be too much 

 to say that the most offensive forms of 

 trade-unionism are found in connection 

 with the so-called learned professions. 

 Time was when it was supposed that 

 the state had to look after the spiritual 

 health of individuals ; and for that pur- 



pose to prescribe their theological be- 

 liefs and religious observances. That be- 

 lief has for the most part been exploded 

 in the modern world, but its place has 

 been taken by the notion that the state 

 is responsible for the intellectual health 

 of its members ; and in lieu of the state 

 church we have state schools. As re- 

 gards the physical health of the com- 

 munity, the general method is to legalize 

 one or two — possibly quite conflicting — 

 schools of medicine, and to empower 

 them to rule out, and if necessary to 

 prosecute and punish, all others. No- 

 body, broadly speaking, seems to believe 

 that, in the absence of all legislation of 

 this character, people could in any ade- 

 quate manner preserve their health or 

 protect themselves against gross impost- 

 ure. We believe it — believe it most heart- 

 ily ; and we believe that the science of 

 medicine would advance far more rap- 

 idly, and that, on the whole, the public 

 health would be far better, if every man 

 were left perfectly free to employ any 

 one he chose to attend him in sickness. 

 At present every licensed practitioner 

 feels himself authorized to call every 

 unlicensed practitioner a quack. We 

 should prefer a system under which, to 

 a quickened public intelligence in ques- 

 tions of health, and disease, the quack 

 should stand revealed by his quackery. 

 How much of real quackery is now con- 

 cealed by the license to practice it might 

 distress a confiding public to know. 



Our voice may be as that of one cry- 

 ing in the wilderness, but we cry with 

 conviction when we call for more indi- 

 vidual liberty, with its correlative in- 

 dividual responsibility. There is some- 

 thing wrong, something vicious, in the 

 application of compulsion where free- 

 dom of choice is indicated by all the 

 natural conditions of the case. Force 

 should be reserved for cases in which 

 force is required, where nothing else 

 will serve the purpose, and where the 

 purpose is vital to the life of the society. 

 In other cases the application of force 

 is wrong. The issue of "Man vs. the 



