that time to
general education in England as a "tyrannical system tamely
submitted to by people who fancy themselves free." Mr.
Spencer ends by asserting that the end, if this sort of
thing is to go on, "must be a society like that of ancient
Peru, dreadful to contemplate, in which the mass of the
people, elaborately regimented in groups, ... were
superintended in their private lives as well as in their
industries and toiled hopelessly for the support of the
governmental organization."

A Free Library may be defined as the socialists' continuation school.
While State education is manufacturing readers for books,
State-supported libraries are providing books for readers. The two
functions are logically related. If you may take your education out of
your neighbour's earnings, surely you may get your literature in the
same manner. Literary dependency has the same justification as
educational dependency; and, no doubt, habituation to the one helps to
develop a strong desire for the other. A portion of our population has
by legislation acquired the right to supply itself with necessaries and
luxuries at the cost of the rates. The art of earning such things for
themselves has been rendered superfluous. Progress therefore halts
because this all-important instinct has fallen into disuse. At a point
the rates will bear no more, and those who depend on them for their
pleasures are doomed to disappointment. The identity of principle
exemplified alike by compulsory education and compulsory libraries,
logically involves the justification or condemnation of both; and, let
us disguise the unpleasant truth in as many sounding phrases as we
please, the fact remains that the carrying out of this socialistic
principle means pauperism pure and simple. Have we forgotten the evils
that resulted from the application of this principle under the old poor
law? or do we imagine that when an evil changes its outward appearance
it changes its inner essence also? The harm done to the national
character by a policy of this nature varies in intensity in proportion
to the necessity of the want supplied. If the thing supplied at public
cost is really necessary and eagerly accepted by the people, it becomes
more readily a potent cause of dependency, and a heavy and at length an
insupportable charge on the ratepayers. This was the experience of the
old poor law. The cost of national education is fast approaching to