ved by excess of tea to
throw the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument
is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to
others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking
the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the
Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment
that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between
beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with
tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the
hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is
to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control
all the habits of all the citizens, and among the rest their habits in
the matter of sex.

But there is more than this. It is not only true that it is the last
liberties of man that are being taken away; and not merely his first
or most superficial liberties. It is also inevitable that the last
liberties should be taken first. It is inevitable that the most
private matters should be most under public coercion. This inverse
variation is very important, though very little realised. If a man's
personal health is a public concern, his most private acts are _more_
public than his most public acts. The official must deal _more_
directly with his cleaning his teeth in the morning than with his
using his tongue in the market-place. The inspector must interfere
_more_ with how he sleeps in the middle of the night than with how he
works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much
_less_ to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote
or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private
detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public
affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should
sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this
and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the
State must make itself responsible for the health of the citizen. But
the point is that the policeman must deal primarily and promptly with
the citizen in his relation to his home, and only indirectly and more
doubtfully with the citizen in his relation to his city. By the whole
logic of this test, the king must hear what is said in the inner
chamber and hardly notice what is proclaimed from the house-tops. We
have heard of a revo