6. “Is it not an injustice for a State to require or try to enforce, allegiance to the State from self-supporting adults, who have never been permitted to share in the framing or endorsing of the laws they are expected to obey?”
Ans. Certainly not. Laws are usually most beneficial in operation on the people who would have most strongly objected to their enactment.
7. “The Parliament of this country is now almost exclusively composed of representatives of the classes whose time is mostly occupied in consuming and destroying. Is this statement true? If true—is it right that it should be so?”
Ans. The statement is untrue. A railway navvy consumes, usually, about six times as much as an average member of Parliament; and I know nothing which members of Parliament kill, except time, which other people would not kill, if they were allowed to. It is the Parliamentary tendency to preservation, rather than to destruction, which I have mostly heard complained of.
8. “The State undertakes the carriage and delivery of letters. Would it be just as consistent and advisable for the State to undertake the supply of unadulterated and wholesome food, clean and healthy dwellings, elementary, industrial, and scientific instruction, medical assistance, a national paper money, and other necessities?”
Ans. All most desirable. But the tax-gatherers would have a busy life of it!
9. “Should not a State represent the co-operation of all the people of a country, for the benefit of all?”
Ans. You mean, I suppose, by “a State” the Government of a State. The Government cannot “represent” such co-operation; but can enforce it, and should.
10. “Is the use of scarce metals as material of which to make ‘currency,’ economical and beneficent to a nation?”
Ans. No; but often necessary: see ‘Munera Pulveris,’ chap. iii.