The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays

Essay One. The Choices Between Personal Freedom and State Protection

Right_001-050.indd 33 5/11/11 2:12 PM ESSAY ONE THE CHOICES BETWEEN PERSONAL FREEDOM AND STATE PROTECTION This address was given by Auberon Herbert before a meeting of the Vigilance Association for the Defense of Personal Rights in London on March 9, 1.880. It was published shortly thereafter by the Vigilance Association. In the midst of much that is written and said about progress and improvement, it is seldom perceived how disorderly are our usual habits of political thinking. Those who are engaged in political work usually reject any kind of systematic thought, and disdain the authority of general principles. Whether they are writers or speakers they dislike to look forward and to consider questions that are not already well above their horizon; they have a generous confidence in the guidance of the future and their own unprepared instincts. They could with difficulty, and perhaps not altogether with satisfaction to themselves, reconcile their votes or opinions on different subjects, and the history of their conduct would contain nearly as many anomalies as does the British constitution. Except in the most general terms they could not describe the goal toward which their efforts are directed, nor have they ever placed before their own minds a distinct and coherent picture of what they seek to make of this England which is subjected to their treatment. They cannot Right_001-050.indd 34 5/11/11 2:12 PM 34 Auberon Herbert ESSAY ONE see the forest on account of the trees, and their horizon is inexorably bounded by the immediate struggles in which their party is engaged. Like the rest of the world, they are not unwilling to dislike and condemn what they do not practice. They look on every system of thought as a newfangled invention of the doctrinaires, a sign both of want of practicality and of intellectual conceit, and they resent it vigorously as an attempt to restrain their intelligence from flowing, like Wordsworth's river, "at its own sweet will." Expressions of pious thankfulness for the prosperous flowings of this mental river meet us on every side. "Thank Heaven!" we hear men say, "we are not as our neighbors! We are not enslaved by formulas! We are not afraid of doing any wise or useful thing, because it is inconsistent with our general views! We have the gift of always stopping in time, and we can therefore safely move to any point, north, south, east, or west, of our political compass. We can never go far wrong, for we always have our good sense ready to protect us!" In listening to such language we are tempted to ask, does anyone in reality escape the thraldom-if thraldom it be-of general principles? We may not recognize in our own minds the general principles which direct our conduct; we may be profoundly ignorant of their existence ; but I think in every case, putting out of consideration actions which are instinctive, it may be shown that whether these general principles are, or are not known to us, nevertheless we are all acting under their guidance. One man may be quite conscious of the principles he is following; he has deliberately examined, tested, and chosen them as his guides; another man is equally under Right_001-050.indd 35 5/11/11 2:12 PM ESSAY ONE Choices between Freedom and Protection 35 the authority of some other set of principles, though he has never consciously placed himself in that position, and does not even know the name or nature of what he obeys; in one case they may be narrower; in another case, wider; more consistently or more uncertainly applied; but in every case, however carelessly adopted or inconsistently followed, or however little recognized they may be, general principles of some kind or another will be found as the guides of conduct. This will become plainer when we remember that a general principle implies the classing together of certain facts-with or without an injunction added to it-and that daily life is only carried on from hour to hour by means of the knowledge which results from such classifications. We perceive that a certain thing acting under similar conditions produces a certain effect, and having repeatedly observed this same cause and this same effect accompanying each other, we enact for ourselves a command to do or to forbear, and we act so as to produce...