NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 341 



and may need more leading from their government than is needed in 

 other countries. In some countries the standard of honor and purity 

 among officials may be comparatively low, and it may, therefore, be 

 unsafe to intrust to such officials the disposal of large sums of money 

 or the management of costly enterprises. Apart, however, from 

 these local sources of difference, there are three general considera- 

 tions tending to dissuade a wide extension of such functions of a 

 government as are not essential to the defense and internal order of 

 a country. One is the danger of discouraging or superseding indi- 

 vidual enterprise. The greatness of a state depends in the last 

 resort on the vigor, the alertness, the self-reliance of its citizens. To 

 reduce their initiative, to teach them to follow passively instead of 

 leading and guiding their administration, may be the worst service 

 you can do them. A second ground for caution is the risk of reduc- 

 ing the amount of care and forethought which people take for their 

 own interests. If you carry too far your efforts to protect them 

 either against physical harm or against self-indulgence, or against 

 fraud, evils which their own activity, self-control, or prudence might 

 avert, you may so discourage the habit of looking after their own 

 interests as ultimately to do more harm than you prevent. Leading- 

 strings destroy the sense of individual responsibility. Lastly, you 

 may incur the danger of making the administration too powerful a 

 factor in the social and political life of the country; you may teach it 

 to feel itself a master instead of a servant; you may form the whole- 

 some habit of obedience to the law into the slavish habit of obedience 

 to the official. Did time permit one could illustrate these risks from 

 the examples of some modern countries, which have been led, partly 

 by an exaggerated conception of the all-pervading grandeur of the 

 state, partly by the natural tendency of officials to grasp at more 

 power, partly by an honest wish to effect improvements with the 

 utmost speed, to push far beyond the old limits the interference of 

 public authorities in fields formerly left to the individual. Doubt- 

 less there is one important argument on the other side to be regarded. 

 It does not follow that what government leaves alone is left alone 

 for the benefit of the individual citizen. The monopolist be he 

 a man or a combination of men who are rich, who are active, who are 

 able, who are perhaps also unscrupulous, though not necessarily 

 unscrupulous, for we must not allow the resentment which some 

 combinations have evoked to prejudice us against all those who try, 

 possibly by fair means, to draw vast branches of business within 

 their grasp is in the field; and he may not only extrude the in- 

 dividual, but may appropriate to himself immense gains which the 

 action of government might have secured for the community. These 

 are cases, therefore, in which national administration may undertake 

 work which otherwise it would have declined, because in doing so 



