PREFACE. vii 



an expositor. It would grieve me very much if I 

 were really open to this charge. But what are the 

 facts ? I define this doctrine as follows : 



" Those who hold these views support them by two lines of argu- 

 ment. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an assumed 

 axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but protect its 

 subjects from aggression. The State is simply a policeman, and its 

 duty, neither more nor less than to prevent robbery and murder and 

 enforce contracts. It is not to promote good, nor even to do any- 

 thing to prevent evil, except by the enforcement of penalties upon 

 those who have been guilty of obvious and tangible assaults upon 

 purse or person. And, according to this view, the proper form of 

 government is neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, 

 but an asty nomocracy, or police government. On the other hand, 

 these views are supported d posteriori by an induction from observation, 

 which professes to show that whatever is done by a Government 

 beyond these negative limits, is not only sure to be done badly, but 

 to be done much worse than private enterprise would have done the 

 same thing." 



I was filled with surprised regret when I learned 

 from the conclusion of the article on "Specialized 

 Administration," that this statement is held by Mr. 

 Spencer to be a misinterpretation of his views. Per- 

 haps I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to 

 declare myself, even now, unable to discover where my 

 misinterpretation lies, or in what respect my presenta- 

 tion of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own most 

 recent version of them. As the passage cited above 

 shows. I have carefully defined the sense in which 

 I use the terms which I employ, and, therefore, I 

 am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract 

 appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when 



