LAW THE ENEMY OF THE CITIZEN.

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How vast then is the negative evil, which, in addition to the positive evils before enumerated, this meddling policy entails on us! How many are the grievances men bear, from which they would otherwise be free! Who is there that has not submitted to injuries rather than run the risk of heavy law-costs? Who is there that has not abandoned just claims rather than "throw good money after bad"? Who is there that has not paid unjust demands rather than withstand the threat of an action? Who is there that cannot point to property that has been alienated from his family from lack of funds, or courage to fight for it? Who is there that has not a relation ruined by a lawsuit? Who is there that does not know a lawyer who has grown rich on the hard earnings of the needy and the savings of the oppressed? Who is there that cannot name a once wealthy man who has been brought by legal iniquities to the workhouse or the lunatic asylum? Who is there that has not, within his own personal knowledge, evidence of the great extent to which the badness of our judicial system vitiates our whole social life: renders almost every family poorer than it would otherwise be; hampers almost every business transaction; inflicts daily anxieties on every trader? And all this continual loss of property, time, temper, comfort, men quietly submit to from being absorbed in the pursuit of impracticable schemes which eventually bring upon them other losses of kindred nature.

Nay, the case is even worse. It is distinctly proveable that many of these evils, about which so great an outery is raised, and to cure which special Acts of Parliament are so loudly invoked, are themselves produced by the disgraceful administration of our judicial system. For example, it is well known that the horrors out of which our sanitary agitators make political capital, are found in their greatest intensity on properties that have been for a genera

tion in Chancery—are distinctly traceable to the ruin thus brought about; and would never have existed but for the infamous corruptions of law. Again, it has been clearly shown that the long-drawn miseries of Ireland, which have been the subject of endless legislation-of Coercion Bills, of Poor Laws, of Rates in Aid, of Drainage Bills, of tinkerings without number-have been mainly produced by inequitablel and-tenure and the complicated system of entail: a system which wrought such involvements as to prevent sales; which practically negatived all improvement; which brought landlords to the workhouse; and which required an Incumbered Estates Act to cut its gordian knots and render the proper cultivation of the soil possible.

Judicial negligence, too, is the main cause of railway accidents. If the State would duly fulfil its true function, by giving passengers an easy remedy for breach of contract when trains are behind time, it would do more to prevent accidents than can be done by the minutest inspection, or the most cunningly-devised regulations; for it is notorious that the majority of accidents are primarily caused by irregularity. In the case of bad house-building, also, it is obvious that a cheap, rigorous, and certain administration of justice, would make Building Acts needless. For is not the man who erects a house of bad materials ill put together, and, concealing these with papering and plaster, sells it as a substantial dwelling, guilty of fraud? And should not the law recognize this fraud as it does in the analogous case of an unsound horse? And if the legal remedy were easy, prompt, and sure, would builders be such fools as to continue transgressing? So is it in numerous other cases: the evils which men perpetually call upon the State to cure by superintend ence, themselves arise from the non-performance of its original duty.

CONSEQUENCES OF NEGLECTING JUSTICE.

99

Observe then how this vicious policy complicates it. self-how it acts and reacts, and multiplies its injuries. Not only does meddling legislation fail to cure the evils it aims at; not only does it make many evils worse; not only does it create new evils greater than the old; but while doing this it entails on men all the terrible oppres sions, robberies, cruelties, ruin, that flow from the nonadministration of justice: and not only to the positive evils does it add this vast negative one, but this again, by fostering many social abuses that would not else exist, furnishes occasions for more meddlings which again act and react in the same way. And thus as ever, “things bad begun make strong themselves by ill."

After assigning reasons thus fundamental, for condenining all State-action save that which universal experience has proved to be absolutely needful, it would seem superfluous to assign subordinate ones. Were it called for, we might, taking for text Mr. Lindsay's work on "Navigation and Mercantile Marine Law," say much upon the complexity to which this process of adding regulation to regulation—each necessitated by foregoing ones-ultimately leads: a complexity which, by the misunderstandings, delays, and disputes it entails, greatly hampers our social life. Something, too, might be added upon the perturbing effects of that "gross delusion," as M. Guizot calls it, "a belief in the sovereign power of political ma chinery"—a delusion to which he partly ascribes, and, we believe, rightly so, the late revolution in France; and a delusion which is fostered by every new interference. But, passing over these, we would dwell for a short space upon the national enervation which this State-superintendence produces—an evil which, though secondary, is, so far from being subordinate, perhaps greater than any other.

The enthusiastic philanthropist, urgent for some act of parliament to remedy this evil or secure the other good, thinks it a very trivial and far-fetched objection that the people will be morally injured by doing things for them instead of leaving them to do things themselves. He vividly realizes the benefit he hopes to get achieved, which is a positive and readily imaginable thing: he does not realize the diffused, invisible, and slowly-accumulating effect wrought on the popular mind, and so does not believe in it; or, if he admits it, thinks it beneath consideration. Would he but remember, however, that all national character is gradually produced by the daily action of circumstances, of which each day's result seems so insignificant as not to be worth mentioning, he would see that what is trifling when viewed in its increments, may be formidable when viewed in its sum total. Or if he would go into the nursery, and watch how repeated actions-each of them apparently unimportant, create, in the end, a habit which will affect the whole future life; he would be reminded that, every influence brought to bear on human nature tells, and if continued, tells seriously. The thoughtless mother who hourly yields to the requests. -"Mamma, tie my pinafore," "Mamma, button my shoe," and the like, cannot be persuaded that each of these concessions is detrimental; but the wiser spectator sees that if this policy be long pursued, and be extended to other things, it will end in hopeless dependence. The teacher of the old school who showed his pupil the way out of every difficulty, did not perceive that he was generating an attitude of mind greatly militating against success in life. The modern instructor, however, induces his pupil to solve his difficulties himself; believes that in so doing he is preparing him to meet the difficulties which, when he goes into the world, there will be no one to help him through; and finds confirmation for this belief in the fact

THE STATE DISCOURAGES SELF-HELP.

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that a great proportion of the most successful men are self-made.

Well, is it not obvious that this relationship betweer. discipline and success holds good nationally? Are not nations made of men; and are not men subject to the same laws of modification in their adult as in their early years? Is it not true of the drunkard, that each carouse adds a thread to his bonds? of the trader, that each acquisition strengthens the wish for acquisitions? of the pauper, that the more you assist him the more he wants? of the busy man, that the more he has to do the more he can do? And does it not follow that if every individual is subject to this process of adaptation to conditions, a whole nation must be so that just in proportion as its members are little helped by extraneous power they will become selfhelping, and in proportion as they are much helped they will become helpless? What folly is it to ignore these results because they are not direct, and not immediately visible. Though slowly wrought out, they are inevitable. We can no more elude the laws of human development than we can elude the law of gravitation: and so long as they hold true must these effects occur.

If we are asked in what special directions this alleged helplessness, entailed by much State-superintendence, shows itself; we reply that it is seen in a retardation of all social growths requiring self-confidence in the people -in a timidity that fears all difficulties not before encountered-in a thoughtless contentment with things as they are. Let any one, after duly watching the rapid evolu tion going on in England, where men have been comparatively little helped by governments-or better still, after contemplating the unparalleled progress of the United States, which is peopled by self-made men, and the recent descendants of self-made men;-let such an one, we say, go on to the Continent, and consider the relatively slow