410 GOVERNMENT ix 



of the regimental socialist assure him that private 

 property and freedom of contract involve the 

 tyranny of the strong over the weak. 



Through the widespread in fluence of the " Wealth 

 of Nations," individualism became a potent factor 

 in practical politics. Wherever the principles of 

 free-trade prevailed and were followed by indus- 

 trial prosperity, individualism acquired a solid 

 fulcrum from which to move the political world. 

 Liberalism tended to the adoption of Locke's 

 definition of the limits of State action, and to 

 consider persistence in letting alone as a definition 

 of the whole duty of the statesman. But in the 

 hands of even the most liberal governments, these 

 limits proved pretty elastic ; and, however objec- 

 tionable State interference might be, it was found 

 hard to set bounds to it, if indirect as well as 

 direct interference were permissible. So long ago 

 as the end of the eighteenth century, the distin- 

 guished scholar and statesman Wilhelm von 

 Humboldt 1 attempted to meet this difficulty. He 

 wrote a special treatise, which remained unpub- 

 lished till sixty years later, for the purpose of 

 showing that the legitimate functions of the State 



1 Von Humboldt's essay was written in 1791 ; but views so 

 little likely to be relished by the German governments of that 

 day needed cautious enunciation, and only fragments appeared 

 (under the auspices of Schiller) until 1852, when the treatise 

 formed part of the posthumous edition of Von Humboldt'a 

 works. A translation, under the title of The Sphere and Duties 

 of Govermmnt, was published in 1854, by Dr. Chapman (then, 

 as now, the editor of the Westminister Review), and became very 

 well known in this country. 



