LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 35, 23 September 1871, Page 11

LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE.

One of the finest problems in legislation, according to Burke, is the determining what the State ought to take upon itself to direct, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual exertion. But soon after his day, it was considered settled that the less the State interfered with individual exertion, and the less it undertook to direct, the better both for individuals and itself. This doctrine became quite fashionable in the course of a very short time, and it has still many adherents. It accorded with the views enunciated by the political economists ; it commended itself to the affections and prejudices of the nonconformists ; and it relieved Government from the performance of some of its most important duties. Of late years this doctrine has been gradually getting into disrepute ; but even now it is held by a very large class of thinkers, that to maintain order, and protect life and property, are the chief duties of Government. Those of them who do not object to State interference in such matters as education, sanitary improvements, and the relief of the poor, still look upon such interference as at best but a necessary evil, which will become more and more unnecessary in the progress of society. But even if that were the case, the legislator has to deal with society as it is, and without special reference to what it may be capable some day of becoming. One of the most important duties of Government is the devising of measures to protect the weak from being oppressed or defrauded by the strong. These latter, of course, have a natural repugnance to any interference of this kind ; but it would not prove less beneficial on that account The leading doctrines of the political economists accorded with the views, inclinations, and interests of the wealthy and powerful, and hence the high estimation in which those doctrines have been held by them. Any interference

with individual liberty was naturally held by those well-to-do classes to be alike iniquitous and intolerable. It has been customary with the disciples of Adam Smith to assert that when any high degree of prosperity has been attained by a nation in open violation of liis most cherished theories, that that prosperity had arisen not in consequence, but in spite, of Government interference ; but it might, with quite as great a show of reason, be urged that the wealth of nations had been acquired, not by their adoption of his principles but in spite of him. The enormous extension of English manufactures has not beenowing, as it has been too generally assumed, to the recognition by the English Parliament of the economic views of Adam Smith, but to the operation of far other and different causes, amongst the chief of which must he enumerated the discoveries and inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Watt. It is to these men, rather than to the adoption by the nation of the theories of the economists, that England owes her manufacturing supremacy. It was their discoveries and inventions, aided by her iron and coal mines, her insular position, her maritime advantages, and her indomitable industry, which made England a manufacturing nation, and enabled her to compete without a rival in the markets of the world. The peculiar circumstance, that the theories of Adam Smith, and the inventions to which we have referred, were being carried into effect at the same identical period, has caused many of the astonishing effects derived from the latter to be ascribed to the operation of the former, as, at a still more recent period, the new, large, and remunerative markets which have been opened by steam communication, and the gold discoveries of California and Australasia, have beon ascribed to the effects of free trade. Without any wish to .under-estimate the benefits conferred upon mankind by the writings of Adam Smith, we think the time will soon arrive when it will be generally conceded that those benefits have been considerably over-rated ; and that however pernicious the interference of Government with trade and industry in his day had proved ; his doctrine of non-interference, which came into operation at a, subsequent period, would, had it been allowed full swing, have been productive of evils still more intolerable.

It is a note-worthy fact that the mechanical inventions to which we have referred w T ere being brought into operation in the manufacturing districts, at the very time that Adam Smith’s economic theories were being adopted by Parliament. It should he noted, also, that the former prepared the way for the adoption of the latter, by rendering the old restrictions on the interchange of manufactures, so far as England was concerned, in most cases imperative or unnecessary. But it was soon discovered, not by Parliament, but by the nation, that however advantageous unrestricted competition in the interchange of goods might prove under such favorable circumstances, for the success of the experiment, unrestricted competition in human labor was productive of so many evils as to render the immediate immediate interference of the Legislature most.desirable. “The doctrines of Adam Smith,” truly observes the noble author of the “reign of Law,” “ when applied here, were a hindrance and not a help. The political economists were, almost to a man, hostile to restrictive legislation.” They objected, on principle, to any interference between capital and labor, employer and employed. As early as 1802 the first Sir iiobert Peel, himself a master manufacturer, obtained the passing of a law to restrict the hours of labor by apprentices in factories. To defeat the law, no apprentices were taken, and consequently, in 1816, the same baronet pressed upon the House of Commons a new measure of restriction, and observed that unless the Legislature extended to factory children the same protection which it had intended to afford to the apprentice class, the great mechanical institutions which were the glory of tUe age would be a curse rather than a blessing to the country. Thus, says the noble author above quoted, began that great debate, which in principles has not yet been ended, how far it is legitimate or wise in the Legislature to inter-

fere, for moral ends, with the freedom of the individual will. The conclusion the Imperial Parliament appears to have arrived at is, that the acquisition of wealth requires in certain cases to he regulated by law, as the mental ignorance and phvsical degeneracy, consequent on the absence of such regulations in those cases, are evils dangerous to social and political prosperity, which it is the bounden duty of the Legislature to remove.

The legitimate province of legislation is a subject which has never yet been philosophically treated, and it consequently remains as much a problem as in the days of Burke. Some of the most important and successful measures passed of late years have been in direct violation of the principles of the economists. These measures logically lead to others, for which the public mind is not yet prepared. For it is ever necessary to be borne in mind that an act of Parliament, to be effective, must be accompanied by, and not be either behind or in advance of, public opinion. The first Factory Act, which placed factories under Government inspection, and regulated the hours of labor of women as well as children, was passed, in opposition to the disciples of the Free Trade School, in 1833 ; and nothing but the most stringent system of government inspection rendered that act effective. Subsequently an act was passed prohibiting altogether the employment of women and children in mines and collieries. These acts were passed to prohibit the truck system, and the payment of wages in public bouses. In 186 T the Factories Act Extension Act was passed, which extends the provisions of those acts to all establishments which employ fifty persons. In the same year the Workshop regulation Act was assented to, which has carried the protection of the law into the precincts of any room or place whatever in which any handicraft is carried on. What is more, it extends that protection even to children which are not working for wages, hut under their parents. The education of children thus employed is rendered compulsory ; and, as the Duke of Argyll well observes, “ no argument can be used in favor of compulsory education, as regards children in workshops, which is not equally applicable to all children whatever.” In 1870 the Irish Land Act was passed in avowed violation of the principles of political economy. It interfered with what is called the “ freedom” of contracts, and secures to tenants the full benefit of all improvement they may make, any stipulations in their leases to the contrary notwithstanding. In all these cases the interference of the Government was imperatively demanded, and, what is more to the purpose, in every instance it has proved in the highest degree beneficial. All the foregoing facts have, more or less, a bearing upon some of the most important of the measures introduced during the present session. They justify the granting of bonuses for the encouragement of new industries, the imposition, for the same object of protective duties, the establishment of savings banks and life assurance, the construction of railways, the subsidising of mail services, tlie protection of fisheries, the legislation and restriction of public houses, and the making of education compulsory. The remarks of the sober author of the work from which wo have already quoted, have so direct a bearing on the principles of these two latter measures, that we cannot do better than insert them here. “ Proposals,” says be, “ for legislative interference, with a view to arrest some of the most frightful evils of society, are still constantly opposed, not by careful analysis of their tendency, but by general assertions of national law as opposed to all legislation of the kind, c You cannot make men moral by act of Parliament.’ Such is a common enunciation of a principle which, like many others of the same kind, is in one sense a truisim, and in every other sense a fallacy. It is true that neither wealth, nor health, nor knowledge, nor morality, can be given by act of Parliament. But it is also true that the acquisition of one and all these can be impeded and prevented by bad laws, as well as aided and encouraged by use and appropriate legislation.” It is strange that so obvious a truth should, at this time of day, require to be insisted upon; and its non-recognition can only

be accounted for by the influence which the writings of Adam Smith, and the doctrines of the political economists, have bad in forming the opinions of English legislators upon questions which are not within the proper province of political economy, and to which the principles of that science have only a subordin ate relationship. “ There is no doctrine in physics more certainly true than this doctrine in politics, that every practice which the authority of society recognises or supports has its own train of consequences, which, for evil or for good, can be modified or changed in an infinite variety of degrees, according as that sanction is given or withheld.” We commend this truth to the opponents of compulsory education, and to the friends as well as to the opponents of the Permissive Bill.