§ 1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be
subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the
right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every
man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the
equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with
the State,—to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying
towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way
trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one,
and, whilst passive, he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally
self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political
corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship
involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property
against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being
simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure
to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies
that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not.
If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation,
nothing can be said, except that he loses all claim to its good offices,
and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment,—a thing he is
quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political
combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can
withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore
a right so to withdraw.
§ 2. "No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of
nature: and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all
their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes
Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the
ideas of his time,—and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good
antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely
prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still
misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments
as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is
not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to
it and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is.
Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely
temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is, at the best,
borrowed.
Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral?
Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its
parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or,
as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more
liberty—that is, less government—as crime diminishes? And
must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on
which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist
because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is
employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers,
policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters,—are
instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is, in the
abstract, wrong. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is
alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals and the means by
which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply
a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything
growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore
legislative authority can never be ethical—must always be
conventional merely.
Hence there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the
right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the
first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an
institution which is, in both nature and origin, imperfect cannot be made
to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain,
firstly, in what attitude a legislature must stand to the community to
avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong; secondly, in what
manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with
the moral law; and, thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited
to prevent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to
prevent.
The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be
established without violating the law of equal freedom is the
acknowledgment of the right now under discussion—the right to
ignore the State.
§ 3. Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe State-control to be
unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for
governments and not governments for men may consistently hold that no one
can remove himself beyond the pale of political organisation. But they
who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of
power—that legislative authority is not original, but
deputed—cannot deny the right to ignore the State without
entangling themselves in an absurdity.
For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those from
whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it
follows further that as masters they confer the said authority
voluntarily: and this implies that they may give or withhold it as they
please. To call that deputed which is wrenched from men whether they will
or not is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally
true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people
only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the
individual only when empowered by him. If A, B, and C debate whether they
shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if,
whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a
party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true
of thirty as of three: and, if of thirty, why not of three hundred, or
three thousand, or three millions?
§ 4. Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is so
universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under
the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to
be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such
power cannot rightly be conferred on any but the largest moiety of
society. It interprets literally the saying that "the voice of the people
is the voice of God," and, transferring to the one the sacredness
attached to the other, it concludes that from the will of the
people—that is, of the majority—there can be no appeal. Yet
is this belief entirely erroneous.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian
panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that
all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any
one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is
evidently a limit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two
races living together—Celts and Saxons, for example—the most
numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority
of the greatest number be in such case valid? If not, there is something
to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all
men having incomes under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every
income above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating the
excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be justified? If not,
it must be a third time confessed that there is a law to which the
popular voice must defer. What, then, is that law, if not the law of pure
equity—the law of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would
put to the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by
that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to enslave, or to
rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and robbery are violations of that
law—violations too gross to be overlooked. But, if great violations
of it are wrong, so also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot
supersede the first principle of morality in these cases, neither can it
in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and however trifling
the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is
permissible.
When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to
himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into
harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for
the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made
equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable
form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the
few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less intense kind. "You shall
do as we will, and not as you will," is in either case the declaration;
and, if the hundred make it to ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to
the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties,
whichever fulfils this declaration necessarily breaks the law of equal
freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the
persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons
of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists
solely in this,—that it trespasses against the smallest number.
The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an
immoral state. The man whose character harmonises with the moral law, we
found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the
happiness of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements by
vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise
constituted—implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied
without sacrificing the desires of others—implies that in the
pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of
unhappiness on the minority—implies, therefore, organic
immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even
in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate
itself from evil; and further, that, unless the right to ignore the State
is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal.
§ 5. That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw off the
burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the admissions of
existing authorities and of current opinion. Unprepared as they probably
are for so extreme a doctrine as the one here maintained, the Radicals of
our day yet unwittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously
embodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote
Blackstone's assertion that "no subject of England can be constrained to
pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of
government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his
representative in Parliament"? And what does this mean? It means, say
they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means much more. If
there is any sense in words, it is a distinct enunciation of the very
right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless
he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may
refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection
with the State. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a
specific, but a general, one, and that the citizen is understood to have
assented to every thing his representative may do, when he voted for him.
But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his
power to get elected some one holding opposite views—what then? The
reply will probably be that by taking part in such an election, he
tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he
did not vote at all? Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax,
seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously
enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he
acted—whether he said "Yes," whether he said "No," or whether he
remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an
unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain
proffered advantage; and, whether he employs the only means of expressing
his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically
agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number
of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle
that A's consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what
B may happen to say!
It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this absurdity and
the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim implies the right to
ignore the State, or it is sheer nonsense.
§ 6. There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. Systems
that have had their day, and are beginning here and there to let the
daylight through, are patched with modern notions utterly unlike in
quality and colour; and men gravely display these systems, wear them, and
walk about in them, quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This
transition state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and
the future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of bygone
despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the old organisation
curiously disguised by germs of the new—peculiarities showing
adaptation to a preceding state modified by rudiments that prophesy of
something to come—making altogether so chaotic a mixture of
relationships that there is no saying to what class these births of the
age should be referred.
As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is useless
to lament the contentment with which these incongruous beliefs are held.
Otherwise it would seem unfortunate that men do not pursue to the end the
trains of reasoning which have led to these partial modifications. In the
present case, for example, consistency would force them to admit that, on
other points besides the one just noticed, they hold opinions and use
arguments in which the right to ignore the State is involved.
For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when a man's faith
and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular
acts; and, according to provisions extant in our statute-book, are so
still. Thanks to the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have
ignored the State in this matter—wholly in theory, and partly in
practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an attitude which, if
consistently maintained, implies a right to ignore the State entirely.
Observe the positions of the two parties. "This is your creed," says the
legislator; "you must believe and openly profess what is here set down
for you." "I shall not do anything of the kind," answers the
Nonconformist; "I will go to prison rather." "Your religious
ordinances," pursues the legislator, "shall be such as we have
prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have endowed, and adopt the
ceremonies used in them." "Nothing shall induce me to do so," is the
reply; "I altogether deny your power to dictate to me in such matters,
and mean to resist to the uttermost." "Lastly," adds the legislator, "we
shall require you to pay such sums of money toward the support of these
religious institutions as we may see fit to ask." "Not a farthing will
you have from me," exclaims our sturdy Independent; "even did I believe
in the doctrines of your church (which I do not), I should still rebel
against your interference; and, if you take my property, it shall be by
force and under protest."
What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in the abstract?
It amounts to an assertion by the individual of the right to exercise one
of his faculties—the religious sentiment—without let or
hindrance, and with no limit save that set up by the equal claims of
others. And what is meant by ignoring the State? Simply an assertion of
the right similarly to exercise all the faculties. The one is just
an expansion of the other—rests on the same footing with the
other—must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed speak of
civil and religious liberty as different things: but the distinction is
quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same whole, and cannot
philosophically be separated.
"Yes they can," interposes an objector; "assertion of the one is
imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to worship God in the
way that seems to him right, is a liberty without which a man cannot
fulfil what he believes to be divine commands, and therefore conscience
requires him to maintain it." True enough; but how if the same can be
asserted of all other liberty? How if maintenance of this also turns out
to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen that human happiness is
the divine will—that only by exercising our faculties is this
happiness obtainable—and that it is impossible to exercise them
without freedom? And, if this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a
condition without which the divine will cannot be fulfilled, the
preservation of it is, by our objector's own showing, a duty. Or, in
other words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of
action may be a point of conscience, but that it ought to
be one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ignore the State
in religious and in secular matters are in essence identical.
The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity admits of similar
treatment. Besides resisting State dictation in the abstract, the
Dissenter resists it from disapprobation of the doctrines taught. No
legislative injunction will make him adopt what he considers an erroneous
belief; and, bearing in mind his duty toward his fellow-men, he refuses
to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this erroneous
belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But it is one which
either commits its adherents to civil nonconformity also, or leaves them
in a dilemma. For why do they refuse to be instrumental in spreading
error? Because error is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is
any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same
reason—because thought adverse to human happiness. How then can it
be shown that the State ought to be resisted in the one case and not in
the other? Will any one deliberately assert that, if a government demands
money from us to aid in teaching what we think will produce evil,
we ought to refuse it, but that, if the money is for the purpose of
doing what we think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it?
Yet such is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who
recognise the right to ignore the State in religious matters, but deny it
in civil matters.
§ 7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the
incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect State. The
practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social
morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its admission would be
productive of anarchy.[1] In a
completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and
inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health—a
condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of
legislation will no longer be needed—is progress toward a condition
in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and the authority
prescribing them disregarded. The two changes are of necessity
co-ordinate. That moral sense whose supremacy will make society
harmonious and government unnecessary is the same moral sense which will
then make each man assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the
State—is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from
coercing the minority, will eventually render government impossible. And,
as what are merely different manifestations of the same sentiment must
bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency to repudiate
governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become
needless.
Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the
foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through
before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will
elapse before the right to ignore the State will be generally admitted,
even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative
recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the
premature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct
those who may too soon abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority
of men, there is such a love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread
of experiments, that they will probably not act upon this right until
long after it is safe to do so.