1917] on Some Guarantees of Liberty 111 



aspirations and grievances will attract the demagogue. Upon the 

 unofficial section of society will fall the burden of maintaining the 

 legions of new "public servants" who will come more and more, 

 unless adequate safeguards be provided, to regard themselves as 

 masters of the public. 



What are these safeguards, and where is the remedy ? There is 

 no absolute remedy, no universally effective safeguard. The quality 

 and indepQndence of Parliament may perhaps improve. But, in 

 view of past experience, it would be ingenuous to suppose that 

 Parliaments will cease to be machine-made or that the " caucus " 

 and the electoral mechanism which it controls will not continue to 

 eliminate the spirit of independence from among the "representatives 

 of the people." The only true safeguard lies in the political educa- 

 tion of the people — including that of coming generations of civil 

 servants — and in the cultivation of a spirit of independence and 

 economic self-reliance among individuals. The liberal doctrine of 

 the State must be inculcated upon the young, and officials must be 

 regarded — inasmuch as they will have sacriticed some part of their 

 individual freedom for the sake of safe and permanent employment 

 — as citizens belonging to a category a little lower than that of the 

 unofficial memljers of the community. Cases of official arrogance, 

 obstruction or ineptitude must be publicly exposed — but let those who 

 expose them be prepared for the pertinacious, clannish resentment 

 of the immediate colleagues of offenders, if not of the whole official 

 class I The law of libel may need modification and clarification. 

 Publicity, combined with a healthy spirit of individual independence, 

 is perhaps the greatest safeguard — and in this respect heavy respon- 

 sibility will devolve upon the Press. It is true, in a sense, that 

 the public usually has the kind of Press it deserves : but it is 

 important that, in a free community, the organs of public opinion 

 should be numerous enough not to fall wholly under the control of 

 any one party or financial interest ; that they should be wealthy 

 enough not to be entirely corrupted or "influenced," disinterested 

 enough not to become altogether commercialized, and high-minded 

 enough not to pander to public vices or to yield to public clamour. 

 But, when all is said and done, the problem of preserving individual 

 freedom in an organized community is a problem of moral and 

 political education, a problem of knowledge of the essential condi- 

 tions of freedom and of the will to use it. There is no panacea, 

 but there is, in the education of citizens to a sense of their duties 

 and of their rights, to a love of liberty, to a hatred of tyi'anny, 

 small and great, to moral courage, truthfulness and uprightness, 

 a very potent safeguard against the evils that may threaten us when 

 once the menace of the outer foe shall have been overcome. 



[H. W. S.] 



