Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/137

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
WHAT IS CIVIL LIBERTY?
111

are acting selfishly, and ought to have their wills conquered.

3. To take another citation from a popular writer: "Not one liberal principle but is admirable in the abstract; yet not one liberal measure that has not worked terrible mischief in our time. The liberty of thought, for instance; who dare gainsay it? Yet it has proved destructive of the principle of religion, without which there is less cohesion among men than among a herd of swine. The liberty of settlement and circulation has given rise to the pestilence of large towns, in which men congregate and live together on terms worse than a pack of wolves. The liberty of industry has reduced four-fifths of the population to a state of serfdom more cruel than negro slavery, while more than half of the remaining population is engaged in a perpetual struggle, more savage than the intermittent warfare of cannibals. Free trade among nations has ruined, first individually, then industrially, then financially, and finally politically, prosperous countries, such as Turkey, while in England it has destroyed, not only agriculture, but all those sterling qualities which formerly characterized British industry and trade.... Parallel to the deception experienced by the modern world through the progress of industry, aided by discovery and invention, have come down on this generation the fatal effects sprung from the spread of education. While thoughtless or superficial writers pretend to find in education the remedy of all social evils, as a matter of fact education has become the source of a vast amount of human suffering in modern times, under which those whose education is their only patrimony or source of income suffer most."[1] This is suffi-

  1. Karoly, "The Dilemmas of Labor and Education," London, 1884, Introd., p. x.