THE COMING SLAVERY. 729 



that " pleasure, in the sense it is now generally admitted, needs legis- 

 lating for and organizing at least as much as work." * 



Not precedent only prompts this spread, but also the necessity 

 which arises for supplementing ineffective measures, and for dealing 

 with the artificial evils continually caused. Failure does not destroy 

 faith in the agencies employed, but merely suggests more stringent 

 use of such agencies or wider ramifications of them. Laws to check 

 intemperance, beginning in early times and coming down to our own 

 times, when further restraints on the sale of intoxicating liquors oc- 

 cupy nights every session, not having done what was expected, there 

 come demands for more thorough-going laws, locally preventing the 

 sale altogether ; and here, as in America, these will doubtless be fol- 

 lowed by demands that prevention shall be made universal. All the 

 many appliances for " stamping out " epidemic diseases not having 

 succeeded in preventing outbreaks of small-pox, fevers, and the like, a 

 further remedy is applied for in the shape of police-power to search 

 houses for diseased persons, and authority for medical officers to ex- 

 amine any one they think fit, to see whether he or she is suffering 

 from an infectious or contagious malady. Habits of improvidence 

 having for generations been cultivated by the poor-law, and the im- 

 provident enabled to multiply, the evils produced by compulsory char- 

 ity are now proposed to be met by compulsory insurance. 



The extension of this policy, causing extension of corresponding 

 ideas, fosters everywhere the tacit assumption that Government should 

 step in whenever anything is not going right. " Surely you would 

 not have this misery continue ! " exclaims some one, if you hint a de- 

 murrer to much that is now being said and done. Observe what is 

 implied by this exclamation. It takes for granted, first, that all suffer- 

 ing ought to be prevented, which is not true : much suffering is cura- 

 tive, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy. In the second 

 place, it takes for granted that every evil can be removed : the truth 

 being that, with the existing defects of human nature, many evils can 

 only be thrust out of one place or form into another place or form — 

 often being increased by the change. The exclamation also implies 

 the unhesitating belief, here especially concerning us, that evils of all 

 kinds should be dealt with by the state. There does not occur the 

 inquiry whether there are at work other agencies capable of dealing 

 with evils, and whether the evils in question may not be among those 

 which are best dealt with by these other agencies. And obviously, the 

 more numerous governmental interventions become, the more con- 

 firmed does this habit of thought grow, and the more loud and per- 

 petual the demands for intervention. 



Every extension of the regulative policy involves an addition to 

 the regulative agents — a further growth of officialism and an increas- 



* " Fortnightly Review," January, 1884, p. 21. 



