Section LXXXIV.
The Organization Of Labor. (Continued.)
To this tendency we find, indeed, another, and a no less powerful one, opposed. Everywhere as civilization advances, the sphere of action of the state grows larger, and the ends it serves more numerous.
In its origin, government was established to preserve only the external security of its subjects. By degrees, it comes to look after their internal legal security, by enforcing internal peace, prohibiting revenge for bloodshed etc. It next extends its care to the well-being, the culture, and even to the comfort of the people. But the claims of the state must grow in the same proportion as the service it renders. While Lowe, in 1822, estimated the yearly net income of the British people at [pg 257] £251,000,000; the government expenses,[506] in 1813 and 1814, averaged £106,000,000, and these sums were voluntarily devoted to public purposes by parliament. And so, between 1685 and 1841, the population of England more than trebled its numbers, But, in the same period of time, the outlay of the state increased forty fold. (Macaulay.) Simultaneously with this development of things, it becomes more and more usual by the exercise of the power of eminent domain and others like it, to sacrifice private rights, acquired by the very best of titles, to the preponderating common good. We may allude, further, to the duty, universally imposed in modern times, of performing military service, to the national systems of public instruction in so many countries; to the large number of societies, joint-stock companies, popular holidays; but particularly to the associations for insurance of every description. And so it may, indeed, be claimed that we have come nearer to a community of goods than could have been dreamed of a hundred years ago.[507] And yet, these are, for the most part, institutions in which we find reflected the peculiar strength and solidity of our age. Whoever wishes to compare the power of one people with that of another, must take into account not only the elements which constitute their intellectual and physical force, but especially their inclination to permit these elements to coöperate for public purposes.[508]
We may now inquire: At what point does this increasing community cease to be a gain? This is as easily determined generally, as it is difficult to say what the limit to it is in particular instances. Progress in the direction of a community of interests of this nature is beneficial, only so long but certainly as long as it corresponds with the feeling entertained by the community, that they have interests in common. Hence it is, that such a noble kind of communism reigns in art and literature, one which causes the stronger to willingly labor for the weaker, and with the greatest success.[509] And so, too, the christian care of the poor, even were it carried to the height of the Gospel counsels (Luke, 3:11), would be no direct obstacle in the way of the development of a nation's public economy, provided it were given, and accepted, only as christian benevolence. Every approximation towards a community of goods should be effected by the love of the rich for the poor, not by the hatred of the poor for the rich. If all men were true Christians, a community of goods might exist without danger. But then, also, the institution of private property would have no dark side to it. Every employer would give his workmen the highest wages possible, and demand in return only the smallest possible sacrifice.[510][511]
Section LXXXV.
The Right Of Inheritance.
The right of inheritance to resources has its origin in a combination of the idea of the family with the idea of property. And, indeed, this combination of ideas is a very natural one. The larger portion of mankind consider the pleasures of the family as the highest attainable, and endeavor, whenever their economic means make it at all possible, to secure them. At the same time, the selfishness of most men is not confined to their own persons, but extends also to their posterity. Hence it is that bed and board, eonnubium and commercium, have, from time immemorial, been considered correlative ideas; and, to all the more logical socialists, a community of wives (or celibacy)[512] is as dear as a community of goods.[513] (§ 245.) And in practice, the greater number of nations of hunters, who, according to our conceptions, have no knowledge of a real family and no knowledge of property, have a custom of burying with the dead the things they used, to kill their cattle etc., or to deprive minor children of their inheritance.[514]