xtended to the fattened goose. In such an
atmosphere, perhaps, our safest course, so far as principles and
deductions avail at all, is to fix our eyes on the elements of the
matter, and in any part of the world to support whatever method succeeds
in securing the "coloured" man from personal violence, from the lash,
from expropriation, and from gin; above all, so far as it may yet be,
from the white man himself. Until the white man has fully learnt to rule
his own life, the best of all things that he can do with the dark man is
to do nothing with him. In this relation, the day of a more constructive
Liberalism is yet to come.

8. _International Liberty._

If non-interference is the best thing for the barbarian many Liberals
have thought it to be the supreme wisdom in international affairs
generally. I shall examine this view later. Here I merely remark: (1) It
is of the essence of Liberalism to oppose the use of force, the basis of
all tyranny. (2) It is one of its practical necessities to withstand the
tyranny of armaments. Not only may the military force be directly
turned against liberty, as in Russia, but there are more subtle ways, as
in Western Europe, in which the military spirit eats into free
institutions and absorbs the public resources which might go to the
advancement of civilization. (3) In proportion as the world becomes
free, the use of force becomes meaningless. There is no purpose in
aggression if it is not to issue in one form or another of national
subjection.

9. _Political Liberty and Popular Sovereignty._

Underlying all these questions of right is the question how they are to
be secured and maintained. By enforcing the responsibility of the
executive and legislature to the community as a whole? Such is the
general answer, and it indicates one of the lines of connection between
the general theory of liberty and the doctrine of universal suffrage and
the sovereignty of the people. The answer, however, does not meet all
the possibilities of the case. The people as a whole might be careless
of their rights and incapable of managing them. They might be set on the
conquest of others, the expropriation of the rich, or on any form of
collective tyranny or folly. It is perfectly possible that from the
point of view of general liberty and social progress a limited franchise
might give better results than one that is more extended. Even in this
country it is a tenable view that the extension of the su