things which concern only himself, would repel the attempt to put
any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence of their
indulgence is a life or lives of wretchedness and depravity to the
offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach to
be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange
respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for
it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do
harm to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving
pain to any one.

  I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions
respecting the limits of government interference, which, though
closely connected with the subject of this Essay, do not, in
strictness, belong to it. These are cases in which the reasons against
interference do not turn upon the principle of liberty: the question
is not about restraining the actions of individuals, but about helping
them; it is asked whether the government should do, or cause to be
done, something for their benefit, instead of leaving it to be done by
themselves, individually or in voluntary combination.

  The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to
involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.

  The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better
done by individuals than by the government. Speaking generally,
there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or
by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally
interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so
common, of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the
ordinary processes of industry. But this part of the subject has
been sufficiently enlarged upon by political economists, and is not
particularly related to the principles of this Essay.

  The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many
cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well,
on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless
desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the
government, as a means to their own mental education- a mode of
strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and
giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are
thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole,
recommendation of jury trial (in cases not political); of free and
popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial
and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not
questions of liberty, and are connected with that subject only by
remote tendencies; but they are questions of development. It belongs
to a different occasion from the present to dwell on these things as
parts of national education; as being, in truth, the peculiar training
of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a
free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and
family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint
interests, the management of joint concerns- habituating them to act
from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct by aims
which unite instead of isolating them from one another. Without
these habits and powers, a free constitution can neither be worked nor
preserved; as is exemplified by the too-often transitory nature of
political freedom in countries where it does not rest upon a
sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of purely local
business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry
by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is
further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in
this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity
of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike.
With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there
are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What
the State can usefully do is to make itself a central depository,
and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from
many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit
by the experiments of others; instead of tolerating no experiments but
its own.

  The third and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of
government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government
causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely
diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part
of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party
which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the
banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the
universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of
the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and
local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments
of the central administration; if the employes of all these
different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and
looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom
of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make
this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil
would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the
administrative machinery was constructed- the more skilful the
arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with
which to work it. In England it has of late been proposed that all the
members of the civil service of government should be selected by
competitive examination, to obtain for these employments the most
intelligent and instructed persons procurable; and much has been
said and written for and against this proposal. One of the arguments
most insisted on by its opponents is that the occupation of a
permanent official servant of the State does not hold out sufficient
prospects of emolument and importance to attract the highest
talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting career in
the professions, or in the service of companies and other public