Should Education and Healthcare be provided free of charge?

The question is not so much: " Should education or health-care be provided free?"

The question is: " Should education or health-care be provided by means of coercion."

A government is a social institution with a legal monopoly on the use of force. This is the definition not only of our government with a mixed economy - but of every government: capitalist, fascist, communist, socialist, elitist, theocratic - everywhere.

Capitalism differs from the other social systems in that capitalism is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships:  genuine rights can be violated only by means of force. 
In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control, see Auberon Herbert's letter to The Times.

TEN MINUTES AND AFTERWARDS. TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,---Your reviewer, reviewing Mr. Spencer's

valuable book of " Man v. The State " with great

sympathy and interest, seems to wonder why Mr.

Spencer does not believe in and admire the Factory

Acts. Surely to protect children against parents'

greed of gain is and must be a right act; it seems

to be his instinctive thought, as it is that of so

many other persons!

Will you let me point out one reason why these

acts were and always will be - till they are swept

.away, a very mischievous, though a well-meant,

stupidity ? They are simply one among the many

other unthoughtful attempts to make an official

regulation take the place of the unselfish care of

parents for their children. How absurd the whole

thing seems as one looks quietly back on what took

place! Before any acts were passed, parents were

supposed--and probably with great justice in

many cases--to be overworking their children,

Selling their bone and muscle for the wages they

received. The acts are passed, and then the air is

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filled with congratulations on the immense progress

made. Moloch shall not be worshipped anymore;

the white slavery is over; neither the manufacturer

nor the parent shall draw an unholy profit from

the very life of the children. How hollow and

untrue the whole thing was! As if there would

have been a single worshipper of Moloch, whether

he was parent or manufacturer, the less on the

morrow ; as if, by the mere idle method of holding

some meetings, getting some votes together, and

passing an Act of Parliament, one fibre in the

nature of the Moloch-worshippers would have

undergone change! I say deliberately the idle

method, because here is the root of the whole

matter. All these official reforms are essentially

idle. Is the nation to be sober? Pass an Act of

Parliament out of hand, and shut up the public-houses.

Is it to be provident ? Pass an Act of

Parliament and compel men to make provision for

themselves. Is it to be intelligent ? Pass an Act

of Parliament and harry the homes till every child

is at school. Is it to consist of unselfish and

devoted parents ? Pass a Factory Act, and tie the

hands of the parent so that he can no longer sell

his child's labour. Nothing is required of us but

to hold some enthusiastic meetings, make some

speeches, write some letters to The Times, and

scrape votes enough together, and then all these

great things shall be done. Happy world! How

easily it is to be cured of its faults! We now sink

back contentedly into our arm-chairs for the rest

of our life, enjoy the testimonials we received in

the moment of enthusiasm admire the statues

that were gratefully raised to us, and re-peruse our

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own speeches, as there remains little else for us to

do in presence of the regeneration in human nature

that our last batch of regulations has effected. In

view of this modern plan of growing good in ten

minutes, we disquieted ourselves very uselessly

in past days about the amount of original sin in

human nature and the ills and infirmities to which

human flesh was heir. What fools men are not to

enjoy perfect health, when Holloway's pills,

Clarke's blood-mixture, and Eno's fruit-salts are

to be had for the ordering; and what fools they

are not to become sober, provident, intelligent, and

unselfish, when all that is wanted is only to pass

two or three Acts of Parliament to provide them

with the qualities wanted!

The word idle seems to me to suit the case with

great nicety. Taking care of the people by Acts of

Parliament seems to me very like the care of the

mother for her child, who rings the bell at the

Foundling Institution, places her child on the

door-step, and then contentedly goes on her own

way. Whatever may be the future of the child, it

must be confessed that the trouble on her part is

short and soon over. The long slow years of anxiety

and watching that await other mothers will not fall

to her share. It was all ended for her, fortunate

woman, when she rang the institution-bell. In

the same way the political philanthropist has learned

to lay his burden in the same expeditious manner

on other shoulders than his own. The world's

troubles are to be easily thrust on one side according

to his creed. A new law, a new office in some

public department, a new batch of officials, will

cure all human perversities, from the parent that

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does not send his child to school down to the

abandoned city sinner who outrages Mr. Dowsett's

feelings by playing cards in the railway-carriage.

Why should we tread any longer that toilsome

road by which men have sought to better themselves

and each other? Why paint a picture by

hand, when you can do it so well by a chromolithographic

process? Why exert ourselves to

enlist the active moral forces of society on our side;

to work by sympathy, discussion, advice and

teaching of every kind; by personal contact; by

that wonderful force of example which makes every

better kind of life a magnetic power among the

lower kinds; by that softening of character and

greater gentleness that diffuse themselves everywhere,

whilst savagery of all kinds is melting quietly

away, under the thousand silent influences of

civilization; by raising and ennobling our own

motives for helping each other, and, above all, by

constant efforts to enlarge and increase our own

powers of seeing clearly, so that we may understand

what are the causes of the evils we see round us,

and what are the conditions under which they can

be successfully attacked? All this is simply superfluous

in presence of the modern omniscient and

omnipotent Act of Parliament. Think how much

trouble, how many long years of slow conversion

are saved by our present admirable process of

compulsion. Charlemagne--not St. Paul or St.

John--was the really enlightened Christian apostle.

Be baptized, or [damned-JW], is the one argument specially

fitted for the souls of men. But, however excellent

these compulsions may be for the first ten minutes,

still every ten minutes has its afterwards; and let

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me now ask, what is the after-fruit borne by these

compulsions? Let us take for granted that before

the first Factory Acts were passed many children

were overworked. There were two ways open for

those to take who felt the wrong and wished to 

remedy it. There was the easy, rapid, and

unfruitful parliamentary way; there was the way

--slow, up-hill, but very rich in after-fruits--of

appealing directly to the people to reform the thing

for themselves. I know this last way would have

been slow. I know that all those who wish to

gather fruit before the tree is planted would have

exclaimed, "And meanwhile the children are left

to suffer." I know it would have required a

personal devotion and belief in their work far

greater than that which is necessary for conducting

a parliamentary agitation, with its showy and

rather sensational rewards; but I also know that

in the end the parent would not simply be rendering

mechanical obedience to a law; I know that

vigilant individual care and intelligent appreciation

of the interests of their children would, as a

consequence, have slowly grown to be a part of

their character. How can these things ever grow

into being, if by a compulsory law you make them

as regards each special case in turn unnecessary ?

Did anything in this world ever come into being if

you first rendered its growth superfluous ? What

is it that develops all the best qualities of human

nature? Simply the pressure upon us of those

natural pains and penalties that make themselves

felt in the absence of these qualities; then the

intelligent perception that we are meant for our

happiness to have these qualities; then the strong

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attachment to the qualities themselves that is developed

in our struggle to gain them. But how can

any of these things be if you step in between the man

and Nature's way of teaching him with your hasty and

ill-advised compulsions? The parent's treatment

of the child, as regards his labour_ would have been

both to parent and child an ever-growing and everwidening

education, if you had only had a little

more patience as regards learning Nature's ways,

and a little less arrogance as regards your own.

And now see to-day the second chapter that

is already following on the first. Over a long

series of years we have been congratulating ourselves

upon the philanthropy of these Acts and

their excellent effect upon the people. A universal

system of national education accompanied by

compulsion has succeeded to the Acts as their

logical complement; and now to-day--thanks to

the efforts of a few discerning people who have

not simply followed a fashion in this matter, we

wake to find that we are applying this system in

such a hasty and reckless manner that we are

injuring the very brains and bodies that we

intended to benefit. Of course, the responsible

office cannot see the mischief---what public office

ever did see or understand the more subtle and

less direct consequences of its actions? Of course,

the great mass of parents that have let the

education and management of their children slip

practically out of their hands, that have measured

their duties by an official regulation, that have

allowed a group of worthy gentlemen at Whitehall

to think and act for them, and have accepted so

much public money for thus morally effacing them

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selves, that, in a word, are drowsing while others

care for and control the very greatest of their

interests, have, just so far as they have done this,

disqualified themselves from exercising a wise and

intelligent discernment as to where the true loss

and the true gain lie. How can it be otherwise ?

All great State systems stupefy,. Without dwelling

upon the oppressive uniformity; the sacrifice of so

many views to the one view; the stiff wooden

parts; the pedantries and complexities that accompany

all attempts at official nursing of a nation;

the hard and fast regulations that turn grants of

public money into a curse and not a blessing ; the

moral deterioration that results from marrying

together one of the noblest of all efforts, that of helping

the children in the path of knowledge, with the

meanest of all precautions, " Let us do it at the

public expense,"--leaving all this out of consideration,

the one great fact remains, sufficient in itself to

damn the whole thing, that where you have a national

and universal system, there you necessarily have two

political parties struggling for its management, and

blotting out all individual choice and perception

by the discipline--in an intellectual sense the

brutalizing discipline--that each party for the sake

of defeating its opponent learns to submit to. All

discipline for fighting purposes brutalizes in this

sense. It deprives men of more than half their

perceptions. And so it comes naturally about

that, having adopted the very best means to make

ourselves thoroughly stupid about education - first,

by Factory Acts, and then by their logical completion,

a universal State system - we now find

ourselves face to face with dangers, the very

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spontaneously and without pressure, that each action

by which the good and the bad are compulsorily

placed on the same level--for example, the selfish

and the unselfish parent, or the drunkard and the

sober man--tends in the long run to delay the

emergence of the better type from amongst the

inferior types. Every such kind of interference

relieves the unworthy of the consequences of their

actions, and takes from the worthy the occasions of

acquiring, and preserving, and strengthening those

qualities that are good and useful. In a word, so far

as you are able to do it for the moment, you make

goodness unnecessary; and as unfortunately the

world was constructed on a plan which makes goodness

an essential element in obtaining happiness, you

are trying to go by one road, while Nature is trying

to go by another. My two friends, Mr. Mundella

and Sir W. Lawson,- both of them, against their will,

architects of national incapacity,-may quarrel with

my verdict on their work; but, quarrel or not,

I must tell them that they are both doing their

best, - the one to make temperance, and the other 

to make the intelligent care of parents for their

children, an unnecessary part of human nature.

They are both throwing all the power and influence

that are in their hands on the side of the inferior

type; they are both, so far as they can do it,

preventing the development of the better type.

They are both manufacturing virtues which are the

mere imitations of virtues, sham products that, as

time will tell them, will neither wash nor wear.

Many men before them have tried a fall with

Nature and her conditions, and have scarcely had

the best of it. Nature in her irony often allows

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us a ten minutes of seeming success when we go

against her methods, and I doubt not that both

Sir W. Lawson and Mr. Mundella will have a ten

minutes of their own; but then comes the aftertime

in which the bent bow flies back. I hope, as

it does so, it may not hit any of my friends too

violently in the face who have been so strenuously

bending it down.

I am, very faithfully,

AUBERON HERBERT.

Ashley Arnewood Farm, Lymington.