of money. For since no prohibition, however stringent, can destroy the natural relation between demand and supply, it has followed that when some men want to borrow, and other men want to lend, both parties are sure to find means of evading a law which interferes with their mutual rights. If the two parties were left to adjust their own bargain undisturbed, the usury would depend on the circumstances of the loan, such as the amount of security, and the chance of repayment. But this natural arrangement has been complicated by the interference of government. A certain risk being always incurred by those who disobey the law, the usurer, very properly, refuses to lend his money unless he is also compensated for the danger he is in from the penalty hanging over him. This compensation can only be made by the borrower, who is thus obliged to pay what in reality is a double interest: one interest for the natural risk on the loan, and another interest for the extra risk from the law. Such, then, is the position in which every European legislature has placed itself. By enactments against usury, it has increased what it wished to destroy; it has passed laws which the imperative necessities of men compel them to violate; while, to wind up the whole, the penalty for such violation falls on the borrowers, that is, on the very class in whose favor the legislators interfered.3

1 "L'observation rigoureuse de ces loix seroit destructive de tout commerce; aussi ne sont-elles pas observées rigoureusement" (Mémoire sur les Prêts d'Argent, sec. xiv, in Euvres de Turgot, Vol. V, pp. 278, 279). Compare Ricardo's Works, pp. 178, 179, with Condorcet, Vie de Turgot, pp. 53, 54, 228.

2 Aided by the church. Ecclesiastical councils contain numerous regulations against usury; and in 1179 Pope Alexander ordered that usurers were not to be buried: "Quia in omnibus ferè locis crimen usurarum invaluit; ut multi negotiis prætermissis quasi licitè usuras exerceant; et qualiter utriusque testamenti pagina condemnetur, non attendunt: ideò constituimus, ut usurarii manifesti nec ad communionem recipiantur altaris, nec Christianam, si in hoc peccato decesserint, accipiant sepulturam, sed nec oblationem eorum quisquam accipiat" (Rog. de Hoved. Annal. in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam, p. 335, London, 1596, folio). In Spain the Inquisition took cognizance of usury. See Llorente, Histoire de l'Inquisition, Vol. I, p. 339. Compare Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 133.

3 The whole subject of the usury laws has been treated by Bentham in so complete and exhaustive a manner that I cannot do better than refer the reader to his admirable Letters. A part only of the question is discussed, and that very

In the same meddling spirit, and with the same mistaken notions of protection, the great Christian governments have done other things still more injurious. They have made strenuous and repeated efforts to destroy the liberty of the press, and prevent men from expressing their sentiments on the most important questions in politics and religion. In nearly every country they, with the aid of the church, have organized a vast system of literary police, the sole object of which is to abrogate the undoubted right of every citizen to lay his opinions before his fellow-citizens. In the very few countries where they have stopped short of these extreme steps, they have had recourse to others less violent, but equally unwarrantable. For even where they have not openly forbidden the free dissemination of knowledge, they have done all that they could to check it. On all the implements of knowledge, and on all the means by which it is diffused, such as paper, books, political journals, and the like, they have imposed duties so heavy that they could hardly have done worse if they had been the sworn advocates of popular ignorance. Indeed, looking at what they have actually accomplished, it may be emphatically said that they have taxed the human mind. They have made the very thoughts of men pay toll. Whoever wishes to communicate his ideas to others, and thus do what he can to increase the stock of our acquirements, must first pour his contributions into the imperial exchequer. That is the penalty inflicted on him for instructing his fellow-creatures. That is the blackmail which government extorts from literature, and on receipt of which it accords its favor, and agrees to abstain from further demands. And what causes all this to be the more insufferable is the use which is made of these and similar exactions, wrung from every kind of industry, both bodily and mental. It is truly a frightful consideration, that knowledge is to be hindered, and that the proceeds of honest labor, of patient thought, and sometimes of profound genius are to be diminished, in order that a large part of their scanty earnings may go to swell the pomp of an idle and

imperfectly, in Rey's Science Sociale, Vol. III, pp. 64, 65. On the necessity of usury to mitigate the effects of a commercial panic, see Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Vol. II, p. 185.

ignorant court, minister to the caprice of a few powerful individuals, and too often supply them with the means of turning against the people resources which the people called into existence.

These and the foregoing statements respecting the effects produced on European society by political legislation are not doubtful or hypothetical inferences, but are such as every reader of history may verify for himself. Indeed, some of them are still acting in England; and in one country or another the whole of them may be seen in full force. When put together, they compose an aggregate so formidable that we may well wonder how, in the face of them, civilization has been able to advance. That under such circumstances it has advanced is a decisive proof of the extraordinary energy of man, and justifies a confident belief that as the pressure of legislation is diminished, and the human mind less hampered, the progress will continue with accelerated speed. But it is absurd, it would be a mockery of all sound reasoning, to ascribe to legislation any share in the progress, or to expect any benefit from future legislators, except that sort of benefit which consists in undoing the work of their predecessors. This is what the present generation claims at their hands; and it should be remembered that what one generation solicits as a boon, the next generation demands as a right. And when the right is pertinaciously refused, one of two things has always happened: either the nation has retrograded, or else the people have risen. Should the government remain firm, this is the cruel dilemma in which men are placed. If they submit, they injure their country; if they rebel, they may injure it still more. In the ancient monarchies of the East their usual plan was to yield; in the monarchies of Europe it has been to resist. Hence those insurrections and rebellions which occupy so large a space in modern history, and which are but repetitions of the old story, the undying struggle between oppressors and oppressed. It would, however, be unjust to deny that in one country the fatal crisis has now for several generations been successfully averted. In one European country, and in one alone, the people have been so strong, and the government so weak, that the history of legislation, taken as a whole, is, notwithstanding a few aberrations,

the history of slow but constant concession: reforms which would have been refused to argument have been yielded from fear; while, from the steady increase of democratic opinions, protection after protection and privilege after privilege have even in our own time been torn away, until the old institutions, though they retain their former name, have lost their former vigor, and there no longer remains a doubt as to what their fate must ultimately be. Nor need we add that in this same country, where, more than in any other of Europe, legislators are the exponents and the servants of the popular will, the progress has, on this account, been more undeviating than elsewhere; there has been neither anarchy nor revolution; and the world has been made familiar with the great truth, that one main condition of the prosperity of a people is that its rulers shall have very little power, that they shall exercise that power very sparingly, and that they shall by no means presume to raise themselves into supreme judges of the national interests, or deem themselves authorized to defeat the wishes of those for whose benefit alone they occupy the post intrusted to them.

XXIII

THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF MORALS1

Not for the human race only but for every race there are laws of right living. Given its environment and its structure, and there is for each kind of creature a set of actions adapted in their kinds, amounts, and combinations to secure the highest conservation its nature permits. The animal, like the man, has needs for food, warmth, activity, rest, and so forth, which must be fulfilled in certain relative degrees to make its life whole. Maintenance of its race implies satisfaction of special desires, sexual and philoprogenitive, in due proportions. Hence there is a supposable formula for the activities of each species, which, could it be drawn out, would constitute a system of morality for that species. But such a system of morality would have little or no reference to the welfare of others than self and offspring. Indifferent to individuals of its own kind, as an inferior creature is, and habitually hostile to individuals of other kinds, the formula for its life could take no cognizance of the lives of those with which it came in contact; or rather, such formula would imply that maintenance of its life was at variance with maintenance of their lives.

But on ascending from beings of lower kinds to the highest kind of being, man; or, more strictly, on ascending from man in his presocial stage to man in his social stage, the formula has to include an additional factor. Though not peculiar to human life under its developed form, the presence of this factor is still, in the highest degree, characteristic of it. Though there are inferior species displaying considerable degrees of sociality, and though the formulas for their complete lives would have to take account of the relations arising from union, yet our own species 1 From the Data of Ethics, by Herbert Spencer, chap. viii, D. Appleton & Co., New York.