Society, M: Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Socie

Excerpt from Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society: Session 1886-7, and Index

If the laws of past ages have been unduly favourable to him, that should be a warning to us not to so lightly indulge in legislation, which may be as unjustly unfavourable. Lord Hartington's theory of the maximum of liberty and the minimum of law appears to be the mark which we should set before us. More injuries are effected by bad laws than are relieved by good laws, and probably greater success would attend our labours if we studied rather to eradicate unwise laws from our statute book than to burden it with additional enactments. I must guard myself from conveying the idea that I regard our laws relating to land as beyond improvement. Whilst far from adopting such a belief, I maintain that no law which interferes with proprietary right can prove in the long run beneficial to this or any other country. What is proprietary right is an inquiry which needs deep investigation and careful thought. It is a question as important to the tenant as to the landlord, and upon its right understanding depends the success of all land legislation.

Freedom is essential to prosperity. We often take far too limited a view of what Free Trade really means. It is not confined merely to the buying and selling of commodities; it is a principle which should dominate the whole of our social system. Whatever a man possesses is his own, and, subject to the single proviso that the good of the commonwealth must not be sacrificed to the advantage of any of its members, he has an indubitable natural right to sell it where, when, and as be wills. Of course this single exception itself needs to be qualified and narrowly defined, or it still leaves the door open for the introduction of so many limitations as to practically deprive a man of the very freedom we advocate. Nothing but a thorough knowledge of social economy will enable us to clearly comprehend what are the natural and lawful limits of freedom.

Our danger lies in the belief that government can indefinitely increase human happiness i.e., that good things are unlimited in quantity, but are now doled out unequally and unfairly. The fact being that only by labour and thrift can the good things of this life be increased and secured, and more is to be got for human happiness by private energy than by public legislation. How little the most popular government can do is seen in the United States. Never was there a country where the weak were so pitilessly pushed to the wall, and where such inequalities of private fortune have risen.

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