The state, or more properly the government, has a positive and a negative duty:
1. The state ought to administer the common interests which cannot be divided without being destroyed, as external and internal security.
2. The state ought to do only what private initiative is incapable of doing, and this in the interest of all; nor should it undertake any enterprise for profit. Such is the theory of Quesnay, Turgot, Mirabeau, Humboldt, Labaulaye, Cobden, John Bright, Herbert Spencer, and of all individualists. This is the basis of the declaration of the rights of man and conforms to all the facts which distinguish the landmarks of human progress. It is opposed to the liberty of others which calls upon any power other than that of the individual. Necessity is the criterion of such intervention. The positive duty of government is, according to M. G. de Molinari, to secure the liberty of the multitude.
That which men call their right is the consciousness of their individuality. The individual is a reality; and, notwithstanding his theory of the utility of the greatest number, Bentham has been obliged to recognize that "the individual interests are the only real interests." In an individualistic society man is not only a means, but is its proper end. Cooperation of effort is more assured as the division of labor is established. The state is static; its dynamic effects proceed from individualities and minorities. For the most part the great governments have denied or recoiled from, when they have not persecuted the originators of, the great discoveries and inventions.
Sacerdotalism and the army are the two great institutions which have, in all countries, been the great obstacles to progress, opposing all new truth and all reformers. Sacerdotalism is dominated by tradition. Militarism rests on passive obedience. In spite of appearances to the contrary, the great effort of the nineteenth century is to substitute scientific and productive for sacerdotal and military civilization. All efforts to the contrary have as their ideal a regression, a reversion to an ancestral type. Saint Simon rightly perceived the criterion of progress which can be expressed in the following formula: "Progress is in direct ratio to man's action upon things, and in inverse ratio to the coercive action of man upon man."—Yves Guyot, "Le critérium du progrès," in Journal des Economistes, December 15, 1899.
British Municipal and Educational Legislation in 1899.—No enactments making any organic constitutional changes, and, with the exception of the act for the relief of the beneficed clergy of the established church from a portion of the local taxation hitherto charged on tithe rents, no measures over which there were any party conflicts, were passed in the 1899 session of the British Parliament. The legislation of 1899 was of a domestic character. There were several acts making noteworthy changes in, or extensions to, the powers of municipal governments, and three measures amending the elementary- and secondary-education systems.
The chief measures of the session were the act for the establishment of metropolitan boroughs in London; the act breaking down the monopoly hitherto existing in respect to telephone communication; the act creating the board of education, taking over the supervision of education, which since 1839 has been in the hands of the Committee of the Privy Council for Education; the Small Dwellings Acquisitions Act; the Tithe Rent Charge Act; the act transferring the early stages of private legislation for Scotland from Westminster to Scotland; and the act raising from eleven to twelve years the age at which children may begin work as half-timers.—Edward Porritt, "British Municipal and Educational Legislation in 1899," in Yale Review, November, 1899.
