nce of his own life, and exert his
manhood to the utmost. But why, it might be asked, on these conditions,
just these and no others? Why should the State ensure protection of
person and property? The time was when the strong man armed kept his
goods, and incidentally his neighbour's goods too if he could get hold
of them. Why should the State intervene to do for a man that which his
ancestor did for himself? Why should a man who has been soundly beaten
in physical fight go to a public authority for redress? How much more
manly to fight his own battle! Was it not a kind of pauperization to
make men secure in person and property through no efforts of their own,
by the agency of a state machinery operating over their heads? Would not
a really consistent individualism abolish this machinery? "But," the
advocate of _laissez-faire_ may reply, "the use of force is criminal,
and the State must suppress crime." So men held in the nineteenth
century. But there was an earlier time when they did not take this view,
but left it to individuals and their kinsfolk to revenge their own
injuries by their own might. Was not this a time of more unrestricted
individual liberty? Yet the nineteenth century regarded it, and justly,
as an age of barbarism. What, we may ask in our turn, is the essence of
crime? May we not say that any intentional injury to another may be
legitimately punished by a public authority, and may we not say that to
impose twelve hours' daily labour on a child was to inflict a greater
injury than the theft of a purse for which a century ago a man might be
hanged? On what principle, then, is the line drawn, so as to specify
certain injuries which the State may prohibit and to mark off others
which it must leave untouched? Well, it may be said, _volenti non fit
injuria_. No wrong is done to a man by a bargain to which he is a
willing party. That may be, though there are doubtful cases. But in the
field that has been in question the contention is that one party is not
willing. The bargain is a forced bargain. The weaker man consents as one
slipping over a precipice might consent to give all his fortune to one
who will throw him a rope on no other terms. This is not true consent.
True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies
equality on the part of both parties to the bargain. Just as government
first secured the elements of freedom for all when it prevented the
physically stronger man from slaying, beatin