which is the
correlative of differentiation, in the growing solidarity of different
classes and countries, in the consequent growth of natural monopolies,
which give a solid reason for believing that the functions of the
central government may require expansion. To decide by any _a
priori_ principle what should be the limits of this expansion is, to
my mind, hopeless. The problem is one to be worked out by
experiment,--that is, by many generations and by repeated blundering. A
fool, said Erasmus Darwin, is a man who never makes an experiment; an
experiment is a new mode of action which fails in its object
ninety-nine times out of a hundred; therefore, wise men make more
blunders, though they also make more discoveries than fools. Now,
experiments in government and social organisation are as necessary to
improvement as any other kind of experiment, and probably still more
liable to failure. One thing, however, is again obvious. The simple
remedy of throwing everything upon government, of allowing it to settle
the rate of wages, the hours of labour, the prices of commodities, and
so forth, requires for success a moral and intellectual change which it
is impossible to over-estimate. I will not repeat the familiar
arguments which, to my mind, justify this statement. It is enough to
say that there is no ground in the bare proposal for putting all manner
of industrial regulations into the hands of government, for supposing
that it would not drag down every one into pauperism instead of raising
everybody to comfort. I often read essays of which the weakness seems
to be that while they purpose to establish equality, they give no real
reason for holding that it would not be an equality of beggary. If
every one is to be supported, idle or not, the natural conclusion is
universal pauperism. If people are to be forced to work by government,
or their numbers to be somehow restricted by government, you throw a
stress upon the powers of government which, I will not say, it is
impossible that it should bear, but which, to speak in the most
moderate terms, implies a complete reconstruction of the intelligence,
morality, and conceptions of happiness of human beings. Your government
would have to be omniscient and purely benevolent as well as
omnipotent, and I confess that I cannot see in the experience of those
countries where the people have the most direct influence upon the
government, any promise that this state of things will be real