principles in a
constitution, they have the rigidity of an iron jacket. The
magnificent formulae in which a society of farmers {19} and master
craftsmen enshrined its philosophy of freedom are in danger of becoming
fetters used by an Anglo-Saxon business aristocracy to bind insurgent
movements on the part of an immigrant and semi-servile proletariat.

{20}

III

THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY

This doctrine has been qualified in practice by particular limitations
to avert particular evils and to meet exceptional emergencies. But it
is limited in special cases precisely because its general validity is
regarded as beyond controversy, and, up to the eve of the present war,
it was the working faith of modern economic civilization. What it
implies is, that the foundation of society is found, not in functions,
but in rights; that rights are not deducible from the discharge of
functions, so that the acquisition of wealth and the enjoyment of
property are contingent upon the performances of services, but that the
individual enters the world equipped with rights to the free disposal
of his property and the pursuit of his economic self-interest, and that
these rights are anterior to, and independent of, any service which he
may render. True, the service of society will, in fact, it is assumed,
result from their exercise. But it is not the primary motive and
criterion of industry, but a secondary consequence, which emerges
incidentally through the exercise of rights, a consequence which is
attained, indeed, in practice, but which is attained without being
sought. It is not the end at which economic activity aims, or the
standard by which it is judged, but a by-product, as coal-tar is a
by-product of the {21} manufacture of gas; whether that by-product
appears or not, it is not proposed that the rights themselves should be
abdicated. For they are regarded, not as a conditional trust, but as a
property, which may, indeed, give way to the special exigencies of
extraordinary emergencies, but which resumes its sway when the
emergency is over, and in normal times is above discussion.

That conception is written large over the history of the nineteenth
century, both in England and in America. The doctrine which it
inherited was that property was held by an absolute right on an
individual basis, and to this fundamental it added another, which can
be traced in principle far back into history, but which grew to its
full statur