various ways be beneficial to the whole community. Let us consider a few of the more familiar cases which come before the courts.

First we have the gigantic system of trading on credit, continually offering temptations to fraud and leading in so many cases to bankruptcy. Repeated efforts have been made to improve the law of bankruptcy, but with small results, since, although there has been of late years some diminution in the number of bankruptcies and amount of bankrupts' liabilities, this is far more than compensated by the enormous increase in the liquidations of Companies under the Limited Liability Act, so that both the losses of the public and the temptations to fraud have continually increased. The cost of the Bankruptcy department paid for by the public is about £150,000 a year, besides the legal costs paid by the estates of the bankrupts and by their creditors. Now this vast system of credit, and all the temptation to speculation and fraud that arises out of it, is the creation of the law, and the interference of Government is in no way necessary for the protection of individuals. Instead of attempting to amend the law of bankruptcy it should be abolished altogether, and no claim for the value of goods sold on credit should be recognized by the courts. The effect of this simple and common-sense principle would be, that no credit would be given to any individual until he had proved that he was worthy of credit; and even then it would be at the creditor's risk. There cannot be the least doubt, that this would be for the benefit of everybody concerned; since speculative trading would cease except by those who chose to risk their own capital instead of that of other persons. If a young man was known to be honest, sober, industrious, and with some business capacity, he would be sure to have friends who would advance money to start him in life, on his personal security. If he did lid not possess or had not exhibited these qualities it is better for himself and his friends that he should not be able to speculate with other people's property until he has acquired experience and given proofs of integrity. There is absolutely no reason whatever for the Government to keep up a costly organization for the purpose of protecting people who choose, with their eyes open, to lend money without security. Let all business be on a cash basis, and if persons who have confidence in a friend's honesty give credit, let it be at the giver's own risk and responsibility.

In the case of shopkeepers it may be said that they would be liable to loss by persons having goods sent home and then refusing to pay for them. But this would be very easily remedied by either having cash with the order or declining to leave any goods at the house of an unknown or imperfectly known customer, till paid for. The whole thing would right itself in a few months or even weeks, if the Government and the law did not undertake a supposed duty which is wholly unnecessary, and which inevitably tends to endless developments of speculation and fraud.

So far I have touched only on debts incurred without security, but there are also many kinds of security which the law should not recognize. Such are all those which involve injury to others, and especially the loss or deterioration of the family home. Bills of sale on furniture and mortgages of the dwelling or homestead should therefore be alike illegal and valueless. They are contrary to public policy as well as to individual well-being, and there is no more necessity for them than there is to allow a man to pledge his wife or children for a debt. The home should be as sacred from such profanation as the family itself.

For analogous reasons nothing in the nature of post obits, or any agreement to pay money out of a future expected inheritance, should have the slightest legal value. By enforcing such agreements the law has been the direct cause of an overwhelming flood of demoralization, and has produced more vice and suffering than have been caused by the most irrational customs of the lowest savages. And there is not the slightest need for such interference. Why should the Government of any country calling itself civilized use its vast organized power to tempt young men to borrow money on their future expectations, almost always for purposes of the wildest extravagance, debauchery and vice? Let the law simply ignore all such debts and claims, and no one will lend money to persons in such a position, unless they are so well-known as to render it certain that they will make a proper use of it. In such a case some relative or personal friend will advance the money at his own risk, and the recipient will consider it a debt of honour, to be repaid at the first opportunity.

There would thus be only two modes of borrowing money or goods-either from some personal friend who could trust to the character of the borrower to repay him; or by giving in pledge some portable article of value to be returned when the money was repaid, and in neither of these cases would the law be called upon to interfere. In all departments of genuine business between persons of known integrity, bills and promissory notes would pass as at present, the only difference being that they would represent debts of honour only with which the law would have nothing whatever to do.

So far as I can see, the interference of the law in all money relations of individuals with each other is wholly unnecessary and produces nothing but evil. In an endless variety of ways it offers a premium on dishonesty, while through all the ramifications of business it is the honest buyers who pay ready money or punctually discharge their obligations, that really have to pay the loss caused by the great army of defaulters and swindlers, which the law itself, under pretence of enforcing the execution of contracts and the payment of debts, has really brought into existence. Our law of property and of debtor and creditor is the actual cause of almost all fraud and dishonesty, a very small portion of the evils due to which it can ever succeed in remedying; while by affording endless scope for the rogues to satisfy their wants at the expense of the honest men it is perhaps the greatest corrupter of morals that now exists.

I am quite aware that in raising my voice against the abuses of governmental action here touched upon, I am one of a very small minority. Yet I feel sure that, short of a complete reorganization of society either on socialistic lines or on those of true individualism as indicated in the last chapter of this volume, no more beneficial reforms could be effected than the strict limitation of the functions of the State in the two directions I have here indicated. Not only would it be an enormous saving of public and private expenditure that is altogether useless, but by making all success in business absolutely dependent on consistent integrity it would become a great power in the moral elevation of society.

CHAPTER XI

RECIPROCITY THE ESSENCE OF FREE TRADE

It is usually said that the English are a practical people; that they prefer experience to theory, and will seldom follow out admitted principles to their full logical results. But this hardly represents them fairly, and many facts in their history might lead an outside observer to give them credit for exactly opposite qualities. He might even say that the English race are more guided by principles than any other, because, though it takes them a long time to become satisfied of the truth of any new principle, when they have once adopted it they follow it out almost blindly, regardless of the contempt of their neighbours, or of loss and injury to themselves. As one example, he might point to the English race in America, who, having at length seen that slavery was incompatible with the principles of their own declaration of independence, not only made all the slaves free, but at once raised the whole body of those slaves, degraded and ignorant as they were, to perfect political equality with themselves, allowing them not only to vote at parliamentary elections but to sit as legislators, and to hold any office under Government. In England itself he would point to our action in the matter of education and free trade. Till quite recently, public feeling was overwhelmingly in favour of leaving education to private and local enterprise; it was maintained that to educate children was a personal not a public duty, and that you should not attempt to make people learned and wise by