3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tractors from undertaking works ; and the high interest originally ob- 

 tained on investments, the great profits made by contractors, and the 

 large jDayments received by engineers, led to that drafting of money, 

 energy, and ability, into railway-making, which rapidly developed our 

 railway-system, to the enormous increase of our national prosperity. 

 But when M. Thiers, then Minister of Public Works, came over to 

 inspect, and having been taken about by Mr. Vignoles, said to him 

 when leaving : — " I do not think railways are suited to France,"* there 

 resulted from the consequent jjolicy of hindering free contract, a delay 

 of "eight or ten years " in that material progress which France expe- 

 rienced when railways were made. 



What do all these facts mean ? They mean that for the healthful 

 activity and due proportioning of those various industries, professions, 

 etc. which maintain and aid the life of a society, there must, in the 

 first place, be no restrictions on men's liberties to make agreements 

 with one another, and there must, in the second place, be an enforce- 

 ment of the agreements which they do make. As we have seen, the 

 checks naturally arising to each man's actions when men become asso- 

 ciated, are those only which result from mutual limitation ; and there 

 consequently can be no resulting check to the contracts they volun- 

 tarily make : interference with these is interference with those rights 

 to free action which remain to each when the rights of others are fully 

 recognized. And then, as we have seen, enforcement of their rights 

 implies enforcement of contracts made ; since breach of contract is 

 indirect aggression. If, when a customer on one side of the counter 

 asks a shopkeeper on the other for a shilling's worth of his goods, 

 and, while the shopkeeper's back is turned, walks off with the goods 

 without leaving the shilling he tacitly contracted to give, the case dif- 

 fers in no essential way from robbery. Similarly, if analyzed, every 

 breach of contract proves to be a case in which the individual injured 

 is deprived of something he possessed, without receiving the equiva- 

 lent something bargained for ; and is in the condition of having ex- 

 pended his labor without getting benefit — has had an essential condi- 

 tion to the maintenance of life infringed. 



Thus, then, it results that to recognize and enforce the rights of 

 individuals, is at the same time to recognize and enforce the condi- 

 tions to a normal social life. There is one vital requirement for both. 



Before turning to those corollaries which have practical applica- 

 tions, let us observe how the special conclusions drawn converge to 

 the one general conclusion originally foreshadowed — glancing at them 

 in reversed order. 



We have just found that the prerequisite to individual life is in a 

 double sense the prerequisite to social life. The life of a society in 



* " Address of C. B. Vignoles, Esq., F. R. S., on his Election as President of the Insti- 

 tution of Civil Engineers, Session 1869-"70," p. 53. 



