THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

HERBERT SPENCER 293
thing else without transgressing justice"; 97 for it would then be protecting
inferior individuals from that natural apportionment of reward and
capacity, penalty and incapacity, on which the survival and improvement
of the group depend.
The principle of justice would require common ownership of land, if
we could separate die land from its improvements. 98 In his first book,
Spencer had advocated nationalization of the soil, to equalize economic
opportunity; but he withdrew his contention later (much to the disgust
of Henry George, who called him "the perplexed philosopher"), on the
ground that land is carefully husbanded only by the family that owns it,
and that can rely on transmitting to its own descendants the effects of
the labor put into it. As for private property, it derives immediately from
the law of justice, for each man should be equally free to retain the
products of his thrift. The justice of bequests is not so obvious; but the
"right to bequeath is included in the right of ownership, since otherwise
99 the ownership is not complete." Trade should be as free among nations
as among individuals; the law of justice should be no merely tribal code,
but an inviolable maxim of international relations.
These are, in outline, the real "rights of man" the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness on equal terms with all. Besides these economic
rights, political rights are unimportant unrealities. Changes in the
form of government amount to nothing where economic life is not free?
and a laissez-faire monarchy is much better than a socialistic democracy*
Voting being simply a method of creating an appliance for the preservation
of rights, the question is whether universality of votes conduces to crea-
tion of the best appliance for the preservation of rights. We have seen that it
does not effectually secure this end, . . . Experience makes obvious that
which should have been obvious without experience, that with a universal
distribution of votes the larger class will inevitably profit at the expense of
the smaller class. . . . Evidently the constitution of the state appropriate to
that industrial type of society in which equity is fully realized, must be one
in which there is not a representation of individuals but a representation of
interests. ... It may be that the industrial type, perhaps by the development
of cooperative organizations, which theoretically, though not at present
practically, obliterate the distinction between employer and employed, may
produce social arrangements under which antagonistic class-interests will
either not exist, or will be so far mitigated as not seriously to complicate mat-
ters. . . . But with such humanity as now exists, and must for a long time
exist, the possession of what are called equal rights will not insure the maintenance
of equal rights properly so-called. 100
Since political rights are a delusion, and only economic rights avail,
women are misled when they spend so much time seeking the franchise.
Spencer fears that the maternal instinct for helping the helpless may lead
222. ^II, 8 1. "II, 120. **H, 192-3.