government of a state. All of
them, too, have their root in an insufficient appreciation of the value
of free effort. But when this is once attained, the interfering party
will see that his efforts should mainly be enabling ones: that he may
come as an ally to those engaged in a contest too great for their
ability; but that he is not to weaken prowess by unneeded meddling. It
may be said that this is vague. I am content to be vague upon a point
where, I believe, the greatest thinkers will be very cautious of laying
down precise rules. Look at what Burke says with regard to state
interference--that it should confine itself to what is "truly and
properly publick, to the publick peace, to the publick safety, to the
publick order, to the publick prosperity." How large a scope do those
words "publick prosperity" afford. Besides, the transactions, in which
we want to ascertain just limits for our interference, are so numerous,
and so various, that they are not to be met but by an inconceivable
multiplicity of rules. Such rules may embody much experience, but they
seldom exhaust the subject which they treat of; and there is the danger
of our suffering them to enslave, instead of merely to guide, our
judgments. And then, on some critical occasion, when the exception, and
not the rule, is in accordance with the principle on which the rule has
been formed, we may commit the greatest folly in keeping to what we fancy
the landmarks of sagacity and experience. Instead, therefore, of laying
down any abstract rules, I will only observe that a prima facie
reluctance to all interference is most reasonable, and perhaps as
necessary in the social world, as friction is in the physical world, in
order to prevent every unguided impulse from having its full mechanical
effect: that, nevertheless, interference must often be resorted to: and
that the best security for acting wisely in any particular case, is not
to suffer ourselves to be narrowly circumscribed by rules, but at the
same time to be very cautious of attempting any mere present good, of
getting notions of our own rapidly carried into action, at the expense of
that freedom and moral effort which are the surest foundations of all
progress.

* * * * *

We were considering, above, the claim which our individual freedom makes
on our individual exertion for the good of others. But this freedom must
in some degree be limited in order to produce i