ERROKS OF HUMANITARIANISM 403 



mimity be artificially maintained by exaggerated State inter- 

 ference; but the capable members, becoming accustomed to 

 have tlungs which they formerly did for themselves done for 

 them by the State, will gradually lose the power of doing them, 

 and win thus be reduced to the same level as the incapables. In 

 the second place, exaggerated State interference on behalf of 

 useless members of the community entails greater expense on 

 the useful members ; and greater expense means greater burdens, 

 less enjoyment of life, less power to make use of life's oppor- 

 tunities ; and, consequently, it reduces the power which the 

 capable members would otherwise possess of making themselves 

 useful. In the third place, Herbert Spencer had already pointed 

 out the remarkable fact that four-fifths of the laws which dif- 

 ferent legislators have passed since the thirteenth century have 

 been abrogated ; no fewer than 650 legislative enactments, 

 voted at different times between 1837 and 1884, had been 

 abrogated before the end of 1884.^ This state of affairs has in 

 all probabihty not altered since 1884, but the figures given by 

 Spencer are sufEicient as an example. Six hundred and fifty 

 enactments, each of which may affect in its execution the 

 welfare of some forty millions of persons inhabiting the British 

 Isles, have been recognised by legislators themselves as useless 

 or harmful. If we consider even for a moment that a law, that 

 every legislative enactment, is a thing which affects very closely 

 — or may affect very closely — the very life of an entire nation, 

 we may obtain a faint idea of the vexations and suffering entailed 

 by a bad law, especially if this law, as is almost invariably the 

 case, has been in force for a good many years. 



These facts seem to show that, where a humanitarian tendency 

 has manifested itself in the last four decades — and the sphere of 

 its manifestation is limited — ^it has been inspired by a false con- 

 ception of altruism. It is an altruism the result of which is to 



1 Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State, p. 60. Williams and 

 Korgate. 



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