e evils which
still exist. In everything that concerns the economic life of the
community, as regards both distribution and conditions of production,
what is required is more public control, not less--how much more, I
do not profess to know.

Another direction in which there is urgent need of the substitution of
law and order for anarchy is international relations. At present,
each sovereign state has complete individual freedom, subject only to
the sanction of war. This individual freedom will have to be
curtailed in regard to external relations if wars are ever to cease.

But when we pass outside the sphere of material possessions, we find
that the arguments in favor of public control almost entirely
disappear.

Religion, to begin with, is recognized as a matter in which the state
ought not to interfere. Whether a man is Christian, Mahometan, or Jew
is a question of no public concern, so long as he obeys the laws; and
the laws ought to be such as men of all religions can obey. Yet even
here there are limits. No civilized state would tolerate a religion
demanding human sacrifice. The English in India put an end to suttee,
in spite of a fixed principle of non-interference with native
religious customs. Perhaps they were wrong to prevent suttee, yet
almost every European would have done the same. We cannot _effectively_
doubt that such practices ought to be stopped, however we may theorize
in favor of religious liberty.

In such cases, the interference with liberty is imposed from without
by a higher civilization. But the more common case, and the more
interesting, is when an independent state interferes on behalf of
custom against individuals who are feeling their way toward more
civilized beliefs and institutions.

"In New South Wales," says Westermarck, "the first-born of every lubra
used to be eaten by the tribe 'as part of a religious ceremony.' In
the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to a native account, it was
customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive. Among certain
tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the
sun. The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues,
sacrificed the first-born son to the chief....'"[4]

[4] _Op cit._, p. 459.

There are pages and pages of such instances.

There is nothing analogous to these practices among ourselves. When
the first-born in Florida was told that his king and country needed
him, this was a mere mista