credit, or Government; at whatever point of
the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same
thing--the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

And have I not experience on my side? Cast your eye over the globe.
Which are the happiest, the most moral, and the most peaceable nations?
Those where the law interferes the least with private activity; where
the Government is the least felt; where individuality has the most
scope, and public opinion the most influence; where the machinery of the
administration is the least important and the least complicated; where
taxation is lightest and least unequal, popular discontent the least
excited and the least justifiable; where the responsibility of
individuals and classes is the most active, and where, consequently, if
morals are not in a perfect state, at any rate they tend incessantly to
correct themselves; where transactions, meetings, and associations are
the least fettered; where labour, capital, and production suffer the
least from artificial displacements; where mankind follows most
completely its own natural course; where the thought of God prevails the
most over the inventions of men; those, in short, who realise the most
nearly this idea--That within the limits of right, all should flow from
the free, perfectible, and voluntary action of man; nothing be attempted
by the law or by force, except the administration of universal justice.

I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion--that there are too many great
men in the world; there are too many legislators, organisers,
institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations,
&c., &c. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and
patronize it; too many persons make a trade of attending to it. It will
be answered:--"You yourself are occupied upon it all this time." Very
true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that
I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose
of inducing them to relax their hold.

I am not doing as Vaucauson did with his automaton, but as a
physiologist does with the organisation of the human frame; I would
study and admire it.

I am acting with regard to it in the spirit which animated a celebrated
traveller. He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe. A child had
just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks were
around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages. One said--"T