SUPERIORITY OF SPONTANEOUS AGENCIES.

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cation. Not a trade in the directory but has formed itself an apparatus of manufacturers, brokers, travellers, and dis tributors, in so gradual a way that no one can trace the steps. And so with organizations of another order. The Zoological Gardens, the largest and best thing of its kind in the world, began as the private collection of a few naturalists. The best working-class school known-that at Price's factory-commenced with half-a-dozen boys sitting among the candle-boxes, after hours, to teach themselves writing with worn-out pens. Mark, too, that as a consequence of their mode of growth, these spontaneous agencies expand to any extent required. The same stimulus. which brought them into being makes them send their ramifications wherever they are needed. But supply does not thus readily follow demand in governmental agencies. Appoint a board and a staff, fix their duties, and let the apparatus have a generation or two to consolidate, and you cannot get it to fulfil larger requirements without some act of parliament obtained only after long delay and difficulty.

Were there space, much more might be said upon the superiority of what naturalists would call the exogenous order of institutions over the endogenous one. But, from the point of view indicated, the further contrasts between their characteristics will be sufficiently visible.

Hence then the fact, that while the one order of means is ever failing, making worse, or producing more evils than it cures, the other order of means is ever succeeding, ever improving. Strong as it looks at the outset, Stateagency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private effort daily achieves results that astound the world. It is not only that joint-stock companies do so much-it is not only that by them a whole kingdom is covered with railways in the same time that it takes the Admiralty to build a hundred-gun ship; but

it is that law-made instrumentalities are outdone even by individuals. The often quoted contrast between the Academy whose forty members took fifty-six years to compile the French Dictionary, while Dr. Johnson alone compiled the English one in eight—a contrast still marked enough after making due set-off for the difference in the works-is by no means without a parallel. Sundry kindred facts may be cited. That great sanitary desideratum-the bringing of the New River to London-which the wealthiest corporation in the world attempted and failed, Sir Hugh Myddleton achieved single-handed. The first canal in England-a work of which government might have been thought the fit projector, and the only competent executor was undertaken and finished as the private speculation of one man-the Duke of Bridgewater. By his own unaided exertions, William Smith completed that great achievement, the geological map of Great Britain; meanwhile, the Ordnance Survey-a very accurate and elaborate one, it is true-has already occupied a large staff for some two generations, and will not be completed before the lapse of another. Howard and the prisons of Europe; Bianconi and Irish travelling; Waghorn and the Overland route; Dargan and the Dublin Exhibition-do not these suggest startling contrasts? While private gentlemen like Mr. Denison, build model lodging-houses in which the deaths are greatly below the average, the State builds barracks in which the deaths are greatly above the average, even of the much-pitied town populations: barracks, which, though filled with picked men under medical supervision, show an annual mortality per thousand of 136, 17·9 and even 20·4; though among civilians of the same age in the same places, the mortality per thousand is but 11.9.* While the State has laid out large sums, at * See "Statistical Reports on the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding amongst the Troops." 1853.

EFFICIENCY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.

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Parkhurst, in the effort to reform juvenile criminals, who are not reformed; Mr. Ellis takes fifteen of the worst young thieves in London-thieves considered by the police utterly irreclaimable—and reforms them all. Side by side with the Emigration Board, under whose management hundreds die of fever from close packing, and under whose licence sail vessels which, like the Washington, are the homes of fraud, brutality, tyranny, and obscenity, stands Mrs. Chisholm's Family Colonization Loan Society, which does not provide worse accommodation than ever before, but much better; which does not demoralize by promiscuous crowding, but improves by mild discipline; which does not pauperize by charity, but encourages providence; which does not increase our taxes, but is self-supporting. Here are lessons for the lovers of legislation. The State outdone by a working shoemaker! The State beaten by a woman!

Yet still stronger becomes this contrast between the results of public action and private action, when we remember that the one is constantly eked out by the other, even in doing the things unavoidably left to it. Passing over military and naval departments, in which much is done by contractors, and not by men receiving govern ment pay-passing over the Church, which is constantly extended not by law but by voluntary effort-passing over the Universities, where all the efficient teaching is given not by the appointed officers but by private tutors; let us look at the mode in which our judicial system is worked. Lawyers perpetually tell us that codification is impossi ble; and there are many simple enough to believe them. Merely remarking, in passing, that what government and all its employés cannot do for the Acts of Parliament in general, was done for the 1,500 Customs acts in 1825 by the energy of one man-Mr. Deacon Hume-let us see how the absence of a digested system of law is made

good. In preparing themselves for the bar, and finally the bench, law students, by years of research, have to gain an acquaintance with this vast mass of unorganized legis lation; and that organization which it is held impossible for the State to effect, it is held possible (sly sarcasm on the State!) for each student to effect for himself. Every judge can privately codify, though "united wisdom" cannot. But how is each judge enabled to codify? By the private enterprise of men who have prepared the way for him; by the partial codifications of Blackstone, Coke, and others; by the digests of Partnership Law, Bankruptcy Law, Law of Patents, Laws affecting Women, and the rest that daily issue from the press; by abstracts of cases, and volumes of reports-every one of them unofficial products. Sweep away all these fractional codifications made by individuals, and the State would be in utter ignorance of its own laws! Had not the bunglings of legislators been made good by private enterprise, the administration of justice would have been impossible!

Where, then, is the warrant for the constantly-proposed extensions of legislative action? If, as we have seen in a large class of cases, government measures do not remedy the evils they aim at; if, in another large class, they make these evils worse instead of remedying them; and if, in a third large class, while curing some evils they entail others, and often greater ones-if, as we lately saw, public action is continually outdone in efficiency by private action; and if, as just shown, private action is obliged to make up for the shortcomings of public action, even in fulfilling the vital functions of the State; what reason is there for wishing more public administrations ? The advocates of such may claim credit for philanthropy, and for ingenuity, but not for wisdom; unless wisdom is shown by disregarding experience.

OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT.

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"Much of this argument is beside the question," will rejoin our opponents. "The true point at issue is, not whether individuals and companies outdo the State when they come in competition with it, but whether there are not certain social wants which the State alone can satisfy. Admitting that private enterprise does much, and does it well, it is nevertheless true that we have daily thrust upon our notice many desiderata which it has not achieved, and is not achieving. In these cases its incompetency is okvious; and in these cases, therefore, it behooves the State to make up for its deficiencies: doing this, if not well, yet as well as it can."

Not to fall back upon the many experiences already quoted, showing that the State is likely to do more harm than good in attempting this; nor to dwell upon the fact, that, in most of the alleged cases, the apparent insufficiency of private enterprise is a result of previous Stateinterferences, as may be conclusively shown; let us deal with the proposition on its own terms. Though there would have been no need for a Mercantile Marine Act to prevent the unseaworthiness of ships, and the ill-treatment of sailors, had there been no Navigation Laws to produce these; and though were all like cases of evils and shortcomings directly or indirectly produced by law, taken out of the category, there would probably remain but small basis for the plea above put; yet let it be granted that, every artificial obstacle being removed, there would still remain many desiderata unachieved, which there was no seeing how spontaneous effort could achieve. Let all this, we say, be granted; the propriety of legislative action may yet be rightly questioned.

For the said plea involves the quite unwarrantable assumption that social agencies will continue to work only as they are now working; and will produce no results but those they seem likely to produce. It is the habit of this