ach particular case
must be judged by its own merits.

Historically speaking, the case was different. The political economy of
Ricardo and the Mills was undoubtedly what is now called thoroughly
'individualistic.' Its adherents looked with suspicion at everything
savouring of Government action. This is in part one illustration of the
general truth that philosophies of all kinds are much less the real
source of principles than the theories evoked to justify principles.
Their course is determined not by pure logic alone, but by the accidents
of contemporary politics. The revolutionary movement meant that
governments in general were, for the time, the natural enemies of
'reason.' Philosophers who upon any ground sympathised with the movement
took for their watchword 'liberty,' which, understood absolutely, is
the antithesis to all authority. They then sought to deduce the doctrine
of liberty from their own philosophy, whatever that might be. The _a
priori_ school discovered that kings and priests and nobles interfered
with a supposed 'order of nature,' or with the abstract 'rights of man.'
The utilitarian's argument was that all government implies coercion;
that coercion implies pain; and therefore that all government implies an
evil which ought to be minimised. They admitted that, though
'minimised,' it should not be annihilated. Bentham had protested very
forcibly that the 'rights of man' doctrine meant anarchy logically, and
asserted that government was necessary, although a necessary evil. But
the general tendency of his followers was to lay more stress upon the
evil than upon the necessity. The doctrine was expounded with remarkable
literary power by Buckle,[119] who saw in all history a conflict between
protection and authority on the one hand and liberty and scepticism on
the other.

J. S. Mill had begun as an unflinching advocate of the stern old
utilitarianism of his father and Ricardo. He had become, as Fitzjames
observes, 'humane' or 'sentimental' in later years. He tried, as his
critics observe, to soften the old economic doctrines and showed a
certain leaning to socialism. In regard to this part of his teaching, in
which Fitzjames took little interest, I shall only notice that, whatever
his concessions, he was still in principle an 'individualist.' He
maintained against the Socialists the advantages of competition; and
though his theory of the 'unearned increment' looks towards the
socialist view of national