CONSCIENCE AND MORALITY 169 



would be a moral wrong, and not otherwise ; the same 

 principle holds good of all coercion of its citizens by the 

 state, whatever form it may take. When a society is asked 

 whether it ought to abandon to their own guidance those 

 who are manifestly unfit for it ; whether Sunday amuse 

 ments should be prohibited, or prostitution, or gambling, 

 or the traffic in liquor ; whether the aged poor should be 

 supported, or famine relieved ; whether or no breaches of 

 the marriage contract should be made a criminal offence, 

 and in a hundred other social problems, there is no arbiter 

 but the public conscience. Every other consideration may 

 be opposed : as, in the case of a famine in an overcrowded 

 country, the most advantageous and the most merciful 

 solution may seem to be to leave remedial nature to her 

 course ; but all such considerations, however strong, are 

 brushed away like cobwebs by the public conscience. When 

 its directions are plain they must be obeyed, or the decision 

 will be wrong. It is true, no doubt, that prudential motives 

 will sometimes intervene, but as soon as their true nature 

 is recognized it is felt that the justification is inadequate. 

 The deliberate abandonment of a hero to certain death 

 may be defended as sound policy, but it is not right. 



This, to the best of my judgement, is a true statement 

 of fact. I do not presume to suggest what ought to be, 

 any more than I would venture to reconstruct man s 

 physical organism on a pattern of my own. But it seems 

 safe to say that the guidance of the public conscience, 

 though it may occasionally be mistaken, is less liable to 

 error than any other that can be proposed. To substitute 

 the advice of the best accredited philosopher, or the pru 

 dential interests, supposed or real, of the whole community 

 or of the ruling classes, would be to court certain disaster. 



