ons, but between coercive and
non-coercive actions. The function of State coercion is to override
individual coercion, and, of course, coercion exercised by any
association of individuals within the State. It is by this means that it
maintains liberty of expression, security of person and property,
genuine freedom of contract, the rights of public meeting and
association, and finally its own power to carry out common objects
undefeated by the recalcitrance of individual members. Undoubtedly it
endows both individuals and associations with powers as well as with
rights. But over these powers it must exercise supervision in the
interests of equal justice. Just as compulsion failed in the sphere of
liberty, the sphere of spiritual growth, so liberty fails in the
external order wherever, by the mere absence of supervisory restriction,
men are able directly or indirectly to put constraint on one another.
This is why there is no intrinsic and inevitable conflict between
liberty and compulsion, but at bottom a mutual need. The object of
compulsion is to secure the most favourable external conditions of
inward growth and happiness so far as these conditions depend on
combined action and uniform observance. The sphere of liberty is the
sphere of growth itself. There is no true opposition between liberty as
such and control as such, for every liberty rests on a corresponding act
of control. The true opposition is between the control that cramps the
personal life and the spiritual order, and the control that is aimed at
securing the external and material conditions of their free and
unimpeded development.

I do not pretend that this delimitation solves all problems. The
"inward" life will seek to express itself in outward acts. A religious
ordinance may bid the devout refuse military service, or withhold the
payment of a tax, or decline to submit a building to inspection. Here
are external matters where conscience and the State come into direct
conflict, and where is the court of appeal that is to decide between
them? In any given case the right, as judged by the ultimate effect on
human welfare, may, of course, be on the one side, or on the other, or
between the two. But is there anything to guide the two parties as long
as each believes itself to be in the right and sees no ground for
waiving its opinion? To begin with, clearly the State does well to avoid
such conflicts by substituting alternatives. Other duties than that of
m