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ness to make it the duty of his heir to conform to it if it is not in its nature improper: here, too, the moral opinion of persons acquainted with the circumstances may usefully take the place of the legal coercion that cannot be applied.

Secondly, there are cases in which the intervention of law is inapplicable as a remedy for undoubted mischief, owing to the general importance of leaving wide discretion to the private individuals who would have to be coerced. One chief case of this class is the treatment of children by parents in order to maintain the parents' sense of responsibility on the one hand, and the child's habit of obedience and respect on the other, it does not seem expedient that Government should interfere with the domestic rule of the parent, unless there is evidence of gross neglect or cruelty; but there may easily be breaches of parental duty falling short of this, which may properly be visited with moral censure.

So again, we have before1 seen that it is impossible to define the spheres of individual freedom for adults so that the observance of the limits may completely prevent all serious mutual annoyance; and, in particular, we have noted that the power which an individualistic system must necessarily secure to sane adults generally, of freely entering into and terminating economic relations with other individuals, may be used to injure and coerce those others. In such cases public opinion may importantly supplement law in repressing malevolent or intimidative exercise of legal freedom, and reducing mutual annoyance to a minimum; though it must be observed that this very public opinion is itself a coercive force which, if misdirected, may do harm of this kind in the worst degree.

Again, there must always be cases, especially in the department of contract, in which the enforcement of strict legal rights would owing to exceptional circumstances which a legislator or judge cannot safely take into account -be manifestly harsh in its effects, and would show a repulsive want of normal human sympathy.

Again, there are acts so highly detrimental to social well1 See chap. iv. § 4.

being that it is desirable to supply a strong inducement to abstain from them, which are yet unsuitable objects of legal repression; because the temptations to do them being strong and concealment easy, it is impossible to prevent them altogether, while at the same time if they are driven to seek the greatest possible secrecy their mischief is liable to take a much more aggravated form. The leading case of this kind is intercourse of the sexes outside the conjugal relation: it has always been recognised that it is the special function of Positive Morality to keep this within the narrowest possible bounds, by affixing a strong stigma of discredit to such intercourse: but it has also almost universally been held that it would be unwise to make it legally punishable.

Finally, there is much mischief similar in kind to that which law aims at repressing, which it is expedient to leave to morality to deal with, merely because it is not sufficiently important in degree: such as insults and calumnies of minor gravity, deceptions and misrepresentations which have not caused any considerable amount of definite damage, though to leave them uncensured would tend to impair the pleasure and profit of social intercourse.

Let us turn to consider the matters in which the operation of morality by praise rather than censure is of special political importance. The chief case under this head is the expenditure of wealth for public ends, or for the mitigation of the most painful inequalities resulting from the present individualistic distribution of wealth. Expenditure of this kind, unless it shows marked unwisdom in the adaptation of means to ends, is almost universally praised; but abstinence from such expenditure is not commonly blamed in any particular case. Some censure, no doubt, is incurred by a rich man who spends his whole income in luxuries for himself and his family and in exchanging luxurious hospitalities with other rich men. But though he is censured in a broad way for this course of life, the censure is vague and general, and does not attach itself to abstinence from any particular act of philanthropy. It is rightly, as I think-held that the struggle to get rich is socially useful,

so far as it impels the struggler to render services to society deserving of high remuneration; and that any such restrictions on a rich man's freedom of expenditure, as would amount to graduated taxation enforced by moral censure, must tend to impair the stimulus to this useful effort. Still, undoubtedly, a powerful pressure-though rather in the form of praise than of censure is exercised by public opinion on rich men in the direction of eleemosynary and public-spirited expenditure, and is powerfully aided by all earnest teachers of the prevalent forms of religion; and under the influence of this pressure the amount of wealth and labour voluntarily devoted to the relief of distress, and to the promotion of objects of public utility, is in any modern community so considerable, that it becomes an important factor in the practical determination of the scope of governmental interference for similar purposes. Thus, for instance, political thinkers and statesmen, in advocating the English method of dealing with pauperism, have usually assumed not only that public poor-relief will be supplemented by private almsgiving, but that a fundamentally important part of the work may be left to the latter. As we saw, the distinctive principle of the English system is that Government is not to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor, but to secure to all who are destitute a minimum of subsistence under conditions deterrent but not painful: and this principle would be rejected as too harsh by many who now accept it, were it not for the assumption that private almsgivers will be ready to undertake the task of discrimination which Government declines, and to accord more generous and tender treatment to those who have fallen into distress through undeserved calamities.

Similarly, as regards the building and maintenance of hospitals and asylums for persons physically and mentally afflicted, the provision for education in all grades, the promotion of culture by means of museums and libraries, the endowment of scientific research, and other ends of recognised public utility; the question what Government

should do cannot be answered unless we know what the liberality of private individuals may be expected to accomplish if Government does not interfere.

§ 5. Since, then, the force of opinion and sentiment in the community as to the social duties of individuals is so valuable to the government, both as support and as supplement, and so dangerous in antagonism, it remains to inquire how far it is a proper function of government to take measures to stimulate and regulate this force.

The question, however, does not practically present itself in this simple form in the political societies of Europe and America; since in these societies the systematic teaching of morality to adults—and, to a great extent, the moral education of the young-are, by a firmly established custom, left in the hands of one or more of the different Christian churches: so that the problem of governmental interference for the moralisation of the citizens takes the form of a "question of the relations of Church and State." Still, it seems desirable, in such a treatise as the present, to begin by considering the problem in a more general way.

Let us suppose, then, that we are dealing with a civilised community in which there is either no religion having general acceptance or important influence, or else only religions that have no important connection with morality: I mean religions in which the objects of worship are conceived to be propitiated otherwise than by the performance. of social duty and let us ask whether government, under these circumstances, should undertake the business of teaching morality and stimulating moral sentiments. The answer to this question would seem to me to depend partly on the answer given to one of the most fundamental questions of moral philosophy: viz. whether the performance of social duty can be shown scientifically-with as strong a consensus of experts" as we find in established sciences generally to be certainly or most probably the means best adapted to the attainment of the private happiness of the agent.

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I. If we answer this question in the affirmative, it does

not indeed follow that morality ought to be based on selfinterest alone; it may still be thought objectionable to rely on enlightened self-regard as the normal motive for conformity to moral rules. Still it would be an important gain to social wellbeing to correct the erroneous and shortsighted views of self-interest, representing it as divergent from duty, which certainly appear to be widely prevalent in the most advanced societies, at least among irreligious persons. Hence there are at any rate strong reasons for regarding it as the duty of government, in the case supposed, to aim at removing this widespread ignorance and error by providing teachers of morality: and such a provision might be fairly regarded as indirectly individualistic in its aim, since to diffuse the conviction that it is every one's interest to do what is right would obviously be a valuable protection against mutual wrong. It is not, however, quite clear that, even assuming the harmony between duty and self-interest to be scientifically demonstrable, it would be expedient to have morality taught to adults at least-by salaried servants of government. For firstly, such teaching would only be efficacious if the teachers inspired confidence: and the analogy of the medical profession suggests that confidence, in the degree required, would be more readily given to moralists freely chosen by those whom they advised. Further, in any cases of doubt or dispute, in which it might seem to be the interest of governing persons that the governed should act in the manner recommended by the moralists, the latter would be liable to the suspicion that they were biassed by the prospect of advancement or fear of dismissal so that they would give but a feeble support to Government-just, perhaps, when their support was most needed. On the other hand, if this danger were partially met by securing the teachers from dismissal, the service would be liable to be encumbered with unfit persons.

II. But the objections against governmental provision of professional moralisers become much stronger, if we regard it as impossible to prove by ordinary mundane considerations that it is always the individual's interest in the present con

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