community content with harder work and

lower wages.

Then the enactments intended to benefit the working-class have the effect of closing the workshop and depriving the workman of employment.

While statesmen are perplexed and politicians are debating these intricate problems of human life, it is not surprising that workmen should have recourse to a solution which may seem to offer a temporary benefit to themselves.

If Bacon was in error, and Adam Smith misled his followers, a working man cannot justly be blamed for misunderstanding the extent to which the principles of political economy should be applied or modified, amid the complex arrangements of modern society.

Even the question of civil liberty is as yet clouded in a haze of words, and has seldom been carefully considered by political writers.

CHAPTER XII.

OF LIBERTY.

ACCORDING to Locke, "Natural liberty consists in freedom from any superior power on earth;" or in other words, "Not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to be under the law of nature."

What Locke meant by the law of nature is not clear. Perhaps he was thinking of Dryden's noble savage running wild in woods. Whatever opinion Locke may have formed of what he called "natural liberty," it had no connection with politics.

Locke's explanation of civil liberty is not much more satisfactory.

"Civil liberty," he says, "is a condition wherein man is under no other legislative

power but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth."

This definition confuses the reader with notions of some imaginary commonwealth, where men and women met together and consented to a code of laws. Locke was apparently dreaming of some original contract such as the English Parliament solemnly affirmed James II to have violated.

When political philosophers sanction such fictions, it is not surprising that the science of government makes little progress. It would be

a waste of time to refer to many other writers whose ideas of liberty are equally indefinite and confused.

We have, however, the advantage of possessing a treatise on civil liberty written by a Radical politician, the late John Stuart Mill. It is not unreasonable to expect from a distinguished author, who expounded both politics and logic, an accurate explanation of civil liberty.

Mill commences by declaring civil liberty to consist in the personal freedom of every individual, so far as it is compatible with the freedom of other members of society. He then proceeds to explain the extent of this qualification. Mill would allow the greatest latitude to every man for the promulgation of any opinions on religion or on government. "All men," he says, "should be free to discuss the principles upon which human society is based, and to question the propriety of any institutions, although sanctified by religion and accepted by general concurrence." Mill, being himself an author, would grant entire freedom to authors. The general proposition that in every community a man should be allowed to promulgate any opinions, whatever may be their effect upon the peace and good order of society, is a statement which practical politicians will hardly admit as indispensable to civil liberty. Personal liberty must be so far restricted as not to endanger the fabric of

society, or to offend the public opinion of a nation. In proposing to abolish this restriction without regard to the religious or political condition of the community, Mill surely violates the greatest happiness principle" by permitting the annoyance of one's neighbour and provoking an outbreak of resentment.

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But to proceed with the examination of this remarkable treatise.

Mill further explains personal freedom, "so far as it is consistent with the freedom of other members of society," and his explanation of liberty is so remarkable, that it must be stated in his own words :

"In a country," Mill said, "which is overpeopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children beyond a very small number with the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labour. The laws which in many countries on the Continent forbid marriage, unless the