Frederic May Holland - Liberty in The Nineteenth Century

THIS book is a result of having studied the development of political and religious liberty for forty years. How well I have selected my authorities the reader can judge. I will merely say that I have mentioned no writer whom I have not studied carefully. The sun-dial has been so far my model that victories in the cause of freedom are more prominent than defeats in the pages that follow. It did not seem necessary to give much space to familiar authors, though I should have liked to do justice to Buckle, George Eliot, and Swinburne.

I regret that I have been unable to tell at any adequate length how the Republic which was proclaimed at Paris in 1870 has survived longer than any other government set up in France during the century. Its enemies have been voted down repeatedly everywhere; the schools have been made free from ecclesiastical control; and the hostility of the clergy has been suppressed by the Pope. The French are still too fond of military glory, and too ignorant of the value of personal liberty and local self-government; but rapid advance in freedom is already possible under the Constitution of 1884. Not only France, but also Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, give proof that the time has gone by when Americans had any right to claim, as they did in my boyhood, to be the only people able to govern themselves.

If any nation can maintain a free press, just laws, and elections of local magistrates, it ought to enjoy these rights, however slight may be its fitness for becoming a real republic; and the suppression of such rights by Cromwell and Napoleon cannot be pardoned consistently by any friend to liberty. Napoleon's chief guilt, as I must here mention, was in ordering the expulsion from office by soldiers, in 1797, of representatives of the people who were striving to maintain liberty at home and establish peace abroad. If there were any necessity for his usurpation two years later, it was largely of his own making. Despotism had already been made tolerable, however, even during the first Republic, by the national fondness for war. This is according to a principle which is taught by Herbert Spencer, and which is illustrated in the following pages by many instances from the history of France and other nations. The horrors of the Reign of Terror may be explained, though not excused, by the greatness of the danger from invaders as well as rebels. And there were very few cases of punishing differences merely about religion by the guillotine.

I have also tried to show how the centralising tendencies of a government are strengthened by the wish of its citizens to gain private advantages by state aid. John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer have published timely warnings against the danger of checking the development of individual energy and ability by meddlesome laws. Whether the power of the government ought to be reduced to the narrow limits proposed by these great thinkers, is a question which has been discussed at some length in my last chapter. It is there suggested that such a reduction would be much more practicable in the case of national than of local governments. It is not likely to be made anywhere at present; but it might be well for reformers to try to restrict the operations of governments according to the following rule: nothing to be undertaken by a national government which can be done as well by municipalities; and nothing to be attempted by either a local or central government which can be done as well by private citizens, acting singly or in voluntary associations. This rule would justify towns and cities in taking such care of roads, streets, and schools as is not sanctioned by Spencer; but it would leave municipalities free to decide the question whether they ought to carry on gas- and water-works, electric roads, and other enterprises according to the merits of each special case. Here in America internal improvements seem to be the proper charge of the State, rather than of the nation; but whether the former has any right to enforce Sunday laws, and the latter to impose protective tariffs, are questions which I have taken the liberty of discussing thoroughly. Herbert Spencer should not be held responsible for any opinions not printed plainly as his. Most of the instances of the working of Sunday statutes were taken from a religious newspaper entitled The American Sentinel. Among very recent cases are these. A Georgian was sentenced on May 16, 1899, to pay a fine of twenty dollars or spend six months in the chain-gang for working on his farm. That same month a clergyman was arrested in Mississippi, merely for taking a little exercise with a hoe in his garden. In 1898, a farmer in the State of New York was arrested for picking a few apples from one of his own trees. The total number of Sabbath-breakers arrested that year in New York City is estimated at a thousand; and there were nearly four thousand arrests for Sunday trading in England and Wales in 1897.

The principle of giving each citizen every opportunity of development compatible with the general welfare, is so plainly irreconcilable with Socialism, that I have thought it well to give several instances of the fact that a man seldom does his best work except for his own benefit and that of his family. Even the exceptionally energetic and conscientious founders of New England did not raise food enough until it was agreed that "They should set corne, every man for his own particular." Another difficulty in the way of state Socialism is that the requisite number of competent managers could not be found after the abolition of the competitive system. It is that which brings forward men of unusual ability and energy, though scarcely in sufficient numbers. Socialism would increase the demand, but lessen the supply. Spencer calls it "the coming slavery." It might better be called a slavery which is becoming obsolete. Our existing system of industry certainly needs improvement; but this will have to be made by following the laws of social science. Their action has done much during the present century to improve the condition of the poor; and we may trust that it will do more hereafter. The nineteenth might be called the philanthropic century, if that title did not belong also to the eighteenth.

The latter has the peculiar merit of doing so much to abolish persecution that there have been comparatively few instances during the period covered by this book. Much more has been done during the last hundred years to extend political than religious liberty; but I have not neglected to mention the most active champions of the great principle, that human rights ought not to be affected by individual differences about theology. If there is too little agitation at present for this principle in the United States, it is largely on account of an unfortunate occurrence of which I have written at some length in the last chapter but one. Here I had the valuable assistance of Francis E. Abbot, Ph.D., author of Scientific Theism, and Benjamin F. Underwood. If the words, "militant liberals," had been used in this chapter, they would express my meaning more plainly than the term "aggressive."

The least pleasant part of my work has been the pointing out defects in a system of philosophy, ethics, and theology which I once delighted to honour. As valuable results may have been reached by the metaphysical method as by the scientific; but if the latter is right the former is certainly wrong. When we find so consistent and warmhearted a Transcendentalist as Miss Cobbe placing pantheism and scepticism among "the greatest of sins" (see her