to such work renders it sufficiently attractive to a sufficiently large class. Whether this arrangement is desirable depends chiefly on the further question whether it is expedient that the work should be wholly or mainly in the hands of persons of comparative wealth and leisure:-a question of which the consideration belongs rather to the second part of this work which treats of the structure of government. And similar considerations are important in the more numerous cases in which either compulsion or payment is necessary to obtain the required services. Thus an important reason, commonly alleged for making it compulsory, generally speaking, on Englishmen of at least moderate means to serve on juries, is that the judicial functions allotted to the jury would be less satisfactorily performed if they were allowed to fall into the hands of a professional class.

So again, it is urged in favour of compulsory military service, that it diminishes the constitutional dangers involved in the existence of a large standing army, since conscripts are less likely than professional soldiers to be seduced into subserving the ends of unconstitutional ambition. Still I conceive that where compulsory military service is rightly introduced, the decisive reason in its favour is the economical reason, that the army required is too large to be raised by voluntary enlistment except at a rate of payment which would involve a greater burden in the way of taxation than the burden of compulsory service. For where the number of soldiers and sailors required for warlike purposes is not large in proportion to the population, and can be obtained for moderate remuneration, voluntary enlistment has great advantages from a utilitarian point of view; since it tends to select the persons most likely to be efficient soldiers and those to whom military functions are least distasteful; both which advantages are lost by the adoption of the compulsory system. Accordingly, no one would propose to apply this system to the police or civil service in any modern State.

At the same time, where there is no regular compulsion to military service, the duty of aiding personally, if required, in

the defence of the community against foreign enemies, ought to be recognised as incumbent upon citizens generally since no one can say how much of the available physical force of the community may be imperatively needed in a crisis of war, and it is desirable that whatever demands may be made upon it should be cheerfully and promptly met. Similarly, the aid of private persons-not in governmental employment -may be on exceptional occasions needed for the maintenance of order, and for the prevention, detection, and punishment of crime: accordingly, a general obligation to render such services, when required to do so by lawful authority, should be legally established: though, on the general principle of division of labour, it seems expedient that these functions should be (as far as possible) left in the more expert hands of a carefully organised and disciplined body of governmental employees.

Even where military service is compulsory, the support and equipment of all, except a comparatively small minority of well-to-do persons, must be defrayed from the funds of the community: and it is obvious that whatever services the public obtains voluntarily must receive adequate remuneration from the same funds-except in the case of the dignified and comparatively unfatiguing posts before mentioned, or where the services are only occasional, and demand but a small expenditure of time.

Similarly, the cost of the material products of human labour required for governmental use, whether purchased, or manufactured in governmental establishments,' must be borne by the public treasury: and where they are purchased it is generally expedient that they should be obtained by free exchange at their market-value: as any compulsory reduc

1 Generally speaking, it is best that Government should obtain by purchase the material products of labour that it requires, owing to the general superiority of private industry, under the condition of open competition. But in the case of costly articles of which Government is the only consumer-such as cannons and ironclads-the advantages of competition may be difficult to obtain: and there may be special preponderating reasons in favour of governmental manufacture,- -as when the quality of the article is very important and at the same time difficult to test if obtained by purchase, or where systematic and costly experiments in production are required.

tion of the price paid for them would either discourage their production or would be an inconvenient way of indirectly taxing the consumers of similar products.

The case is otherwise when the commodity required is land or other natural utility, not due to human industry. Here the primary question is not how the Government is to be supplied with such conditions, but rather how far it is desirable that it should retain possession of them. Actually, as we saw, in newly colonised countries, all the land with its contents is rightly treated as originally the property of the community: and much of the land that now belongs to the public, in modern European communities, has never been private property; while other portions have been the semi-private property of royal families, and have thus gradually acquired the character of public property, as the monarchy changed from a feudal or semi-feudal to a modern institution. No doubt where there are valid reasons for retaining such land in public ownership-whether because it is required for the due performance of governmental functions, or because it is likely to be more useful under governmental management there would also be strong reasons for acquiring it, if it were in private hands: only where it is already public property, the important further question whether it is to be obtained compulsorily or by voluntary exchange does not arise. Where, however, this question does arise, I hold it expedient in the special case of land that the community should have the right of compulsory purchase; because there is nothing to be gained here as there is in the case before discussed of the products of labour-by allowing the owner of land to profit by the need of the community.1

§3. The peculiar relation of the community to land, as contrasted with other species of wealth, appears again when we consider the sources from which the funds required for governmental purchases are to be obtained. For one such source, historically of much importance, is the rent of the land. So far as this rent is a price paid for utilities that 1 This question will be more discussed in the next chapter.

are not due to human labour,—or are an indirect result of labour spent for other objects, and incapable of being appropriated by the persons whose labour has caused them,'the appropriation of such rent by government on behalf of the community is theoretically quite in harmony with individualistic principles: but the difficulty of securing for public uses this " unearned" rent without at the same time confiscating the earnings of human labour and enterprise is very great, and perhaps insuperable. And in any case, where land has become private property, the financial operation required to transfer its unearned value to public ownership, with due compensation 2 for existing rights, could not be safely undertaken, unless the time at which the community would enter upon the enjoyment of its ownership were postponed to a distant date: so that for this reason alone-apart from the difficulty before noticed-the plan of defraying any considerable part of governmental expenditure from the rent of land is not within the range of practical politics for modern States generally.

We may therefore assume that by far the greater part of the funds required by Government must be raised, in the long run, by the contributions levied from private persons which we may broadly call taxes. But large supplies may be obtained temporarily, by Government as by individuals, through loans and, in fact, a considerable part of the taxes now levied in most of the leading European States is required to pay interest on such loans. Speaking broadly, such borrowing is legitimate for governments under conditions similar to those under which it would be prudent for private persons either (1) when the loan is employed productively, so that interest may be paid and a certain portion of the principal annually repaid out of the profit made by the use of it; or (2) where it is employed to meet an occasional necessity for enlarged consumption, which could not be met

1 As, for instance, when the successful introduction of a new manufacture into a district causes an increase of population, and a consequent rise in the value of neighbouring land generally.

2 I have already said that the proposal to take it without compensation does not seem to me to deserve discussion.

without painful sacrifices out of the income of a single year. Productive outlay, again, may be either financially profitable, when the loan is employed in some business carried on by Government, of which the profits go directly to the treasury; or it may be only profitable socially by increasing private incomes in the latter case it has to be considered whether the extra taxes which it will necessitate will not involve disadvantages outweighing the gain. At any rate the increased receipts accruing to the community in consequence of such outlay ought obviously to be at the very least sufficient to repay the loan with interest by the close of the period required to exhaust the productive effects of the outlay. A similar general principle is, I think, theoretically incontrovertible in the-practically more important-case of unproductive borrowing to meet an occasional need of extra expenditure: the number of years over which the sacrifice imposed by the emergency may safely be extended ought to be limited by the condition of paying off the loan before a similar emergency may be expected to occur again. But in practice the application of this principle is very difficult: since the chief emergencies which necessitate such loans are foreign wars, and we have at present no means of forecasting scientifically the magnitude and frequency of a nation's future wars. In these circumstances, it seems most prudent to infer the probability of future wars from past—especially recent experience: and if so, the principle above laid down is manifestly being transgressed by more than one of the leading nations of modern Europe:-a transgression which can only be partly excused by the probability that the future increase of national wealth and the tendency in the rate of interest to fall will reduce the burden of any national debt already contracted.

To discuss more in detail the effects of loans, or the right mode of raising them, would be inappropriate in such a treatise as this. And it also seems to me best, in passing to consider the central question of this chapter-the question of taxation-to omit such topics as belong rather to the special spheres of political economy or technical finance.