THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 151 



portion to the superiorities wliich make liim valuable to himself and 

 others. 



And yet, notwithstanding the conspicuousness of these truths, 

 which should strike every one who leaves his lexicons, and his law- 

 deeds, and his ledgers, and looks abroad into that natural order of 

 things under which we exist, and to which we must conform, there is 

 continual advocacy of paternal government. The intrusion of family- 

 ethics into the ethics of the state, instead of being regarded as socially 

 injurious, is more and more demanded as the only efficient means to 

 social benefit. So far has this delusion now gone, that it vitiates the 

 beliefs of those who might, more than all others, be thought safe from 

 it. In the essay to which the Cobden Club awarded its prize in 1880, 

 there occurs the assertion that "the truth of free trade is clouded over 

 by the laissez-faire fallacy " ; and we are told that " we need a great 

 deal more of paternal government — that bugbear of the old econo- 

 mists."* 



Vitally important as is the truth above insisted upon, since accept- 

 ance or rejection of it affects the entire fabric of political conclusions 

 formed, I may be excused if I re-emphasize it by here quoting certain 

 passages contained in a work I published in 1850 : premising only 

 that the reader must not hold me committed to such teleological im- 

 plications as they contain. After describing " that state of universal 

 warfare maintained throughout the lower creation," and showing that 

 an average of benefit results from it, I have continued thus : 



Note, further, that their carnivorous enemies not only remove from herbiv- 

 orous herds individuals past their prime, but also weed ont the sickly, the mal- 

 formed, and the least fleet or powerful. By the aid of which purifying pro- 

 cess, as well as by the fighting, so universal in the pairing-season, all vitiation of 

 race through the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented, and the 

 maintenance of a constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, 

 and therefore most productive of happiness, is insured. 



The development of the higher creation is a progress toward a form of being 

 capable of happiness undiminished by these drawbacks. It is in the human race 

 that the consummation is to be accomplished. Civilization is the last stage of 

 its accomplishment. And the ideal man is tiie man in whom all the conditions 

 of tliat accomplishment are fulfilled. Meanwhile, the well-being of existing 

 humanity and the unfolding of it into this ultimate perfection are both secured 

 by that same beneficent though severe discipline to which the animate creation 

 at large is subject — a discipline which is pitiless in the working out of good, a 

 felicity-pursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and tem- 

 porary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon 

 the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the 

 weak by the strong, which leave so many " in shallows and in miseries," are the 

 decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. . . . 



To become fit for the social state, man has not only to lose his savageness, 

 but he has to acquire the capacities needful for civilized life. Power of appli- 



* " On the Value of Political Economy to Mankind," by A. N. Gumming, pp. 47, 48. 



