use he is being doubted with more reason. In one room we are asking
why the Government and the great experts between them cannot sail a
ship. In another room we are deciding that the Government and experts
shall be allowed, without trial or discussion, to immure any one's body,
damn any one's soul, and dispose of unborn generations with the levity
of a pagan god. We are putting the official on the throne while he is
still in the dock.

The mere meaning of words is now strangely forgotten and falsified; as
when people talk of an author's "message," without thinking whom it
is from; and I have noted in these connections the strange misuse of
another word. It is the excellent mediaeval word "charter." I remember
the Act that sought to save gutter-boys from cigarettes was called
"The Children's Charter." Similarly the Act which seeks to lock up as
lunatics people who are not lunatics was actually called a "charter" of
the feeble-minded. Now this terminology is insanely wrong, even if the
Bills are right. Even were they right in theory they would be applied
only to the poor, like many better rules about education and cruelty.
A woman was lately punished for cruelty because her children were not
washed when it was proved that she had no water. From that it will be an
easy step in Advanced Thought to punishing a man for wine-bibbing when
it is proved that he had no wine. Rifts in right reason widen down the
ages. And when we have begun by shutting up a confessedly kind
person for cruelty, we may yet come to shutting up Mr. Tom Mann for
feeblemindedness.

But even if such laws do good to children or idiots, it is wrong to use
the word "charter." A charter does not mean a thing that does good to
people. It means a thing that grants people more rights and liberties.
It may be a good thing for gutter-boys to be deprived of their
cigarettes: it might be a good thing for aldermen to be deprived of
their cigars. But I think the Goldsmiths' Company would be very much
surprised if the King granted them a new charter (in place of their
mediaeval charter), and it only meant that policemen might pull the
cigars out of their mouths. It may be a good thing that all drunkards
should be locked up: and many acute statesmen (King John, for instance)
would certainly have thought it a good thing if all aristocrats could
be locked up. But even that somewhat cynical prince would scarcely have
granted to the barons a thing called "the Great Charter