Of Kiw Kgiut. 



THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1891. 



FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE.* 



By HEEBEKT SPENCER. 



OF the many ways in which common-sense inferences about 

 social affairs are flatly contradicted by events (as when 

 measures taken to suppress a book cause increased circulation of 

 it, or as when attempts to prevent usurious rates of interest make 

 the terms harder for the borrower, or as when there is greater 

 difficulty in getting things at the places of production than else- 

 where) one of the most curious is the way in which the more 

 things improve the louder become the exclamations about their 

 badness. 



In days when the people were without any political power, 

 their subjection was rarely complained of; but after free institu- 

 tions had so far advanced in England that our political arrange- 

 ments were envied by continental peoples, the denunciations of 

 aristocratic rule grew gradually stronger, until there came a great 

 widening of the franchise, soon followed by complaints that 

 things were going wrong for want of still further widening. If 

 we trace up the treatment of women from the days of savagedom, 

 when they bore all the burdens and after the men had eaten re- 

 ceived such food as remained, up through the middle ages when 

 they served the men at their meals, to our own day when through- 

 out our social arrangements the claims of women are always put 

 first, we see that along with the worst treatment there went the 

 least apparent consciousness that the treatment was bad ; while 

 now that they are better treated than ever before,.the proclaiming 

 of their grievances daily strengthens : the loudest outcries coming 



* Introduction to a Collection of Essays entitled A Plea for Liberty; An Argument 

 against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation. Consisting of essays by various writers. 

 Edited by Dr. Thomas Mackay. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1891. 

 vol. xxxviii. 49 



