It is now somewhat the fashion to regard as benighted the school of
thought which was founded two hundred years ago by Du Quesnay and the
French Physiocrates, which reached its zenith in the person of Adam
Smith, and whose influence rapidly declined in England after the great
battle of Free Trade had been fought and won. But whatever may have been
the faults of that school, and however little its philosophy is capable
of affording an answer to many of the complex questions which modern
government and society present, it laid fast hold of one unquestionably
sound principle. It entertained a deep mistrust of Government
interference in the social and economic relations of life. Moreover, it
saw, long before the fact became apparent to the rest of the world,
that, in spite not only of some outward dissimilarities of methods but
even of an instinctive mutual repulsion, despotic bureaucracy was the
natural ally of those communistic principles which the economists deemed
it their main business in life to combat and condemn. Many regard with
some disquietude the frequent concessions which have of late years been
made in England to demands for State interference. Nevertheless, it is
to be hoped that the main principle advocated by the economists still
holds the field, that individualism is not being crushed out of
existence, and that the majority of our countrymen still believe that
State interference--being an evil, although sometimes admittedly a
necessary evil--should be jealously watched and restricted to the
minimum amount absolutely necessary in each special case.

Attention is drawn to this point in order to show that the observations
which follow are in no degree based on any general desire to exalt the
power of the State at the expense of the individual.

Our habits of thought, our past history, and our national character all,
therefore, point in the direction of allowing individualism as wide a
scope as possible in the work of national expansion. Hence the career of
the East India Company and the tendency displayed more recently in
Africa to govern through the agency of private companies. On the other
hand, it is greatly to be doubted whether the principles, which a wise
policy would dictate in the treatment of subject races, will receive
their application to so full an extent at the hands of private
individuals as would be the case at the hands of the State. The
guarantee for good government is even less solid where