g, despoiling his
neighbours, so it secures a larger measure of freedom for all by every
restriction which it imposes with a view to preventing one man from
making use of any of his advantages to the disadvantage of others.

There emerges a distinction between unsocial and social freedom.
Unsocial freedom is the right of a man to use his powers without regard
to the wishes or interests of any one but himself. Such freedom is
theoretically possible for an individual. It is antithetic to all public
control. It is theoretically impossible for a plurality of individuals
living in mutual contact. Socially it is a contradiction, unless the
desires of all men were automatically attuned to social ends. Social
freedom, then, for any epoch short of the millennium rests on restraint.
It is a freedom that can be enjoyed by all the members of a community,
and it is the freedom to choose among those lines of activity which do
not involve injury to others. As experience of the social effects of
action ripens, and as the social conscience is awakened, the conception
of injury is widened and insight into its causes is deepened. The area
of restraint is therefore increased. But, inasmuch as injury inflicted
is itself crippling to the sufferer, as it lowers his health, confines
his life, cramps his powers, so the prevention of such injury sets him
free. The restraint of the aggressor is the freedom of the sufferer, and
only by restraint on the actions by which men injure one another do they
as a whole community gain freedom in all courses of conduct that can be
pursued without ultimate social disharmony.

It is, therefore, a very shallow wit that taunts contemporary Liberalism
with inconsistency in opposing economic protection while it supports
protective legislation for the manual labourer. The two things have
nothing in common but that they are restraints intended to operate in
the interests of somebody. The one is a restraint which, in the Liberal
view, would operate in favour of certain industries and interests to the
prejudice of others, and, on the whole, in favour of those who are
already more fortunately placed and against the poorer classes. The
other is a restraint conceived in the interest primarily of the poorer
classes with the object of securing to them a more effective freedom and
a nearer approach to equality of conditions in industrial relations.
There is point in the argument only for those who conceive liberty as
oppos