The Right to Ignore the State

by Herbert Spencer
It is a mistake to assume
that government must
necessarily last forever.

Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it (government) is essential; to the good, not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself, and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Restraint is for the savage, the rapacious, the violent; not for the just, the gentle, the benevolent.

The time was when the history of a people was but the history of its government. It is otherwise now. The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man.

The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government. Constitutional forms means this. Political freedom means this. Democracy means this. In societies, associations, joint-stock companies, we have new agencies occupying big fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State.

With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers — is no longer master, but slave. "Pressure from without" has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler. It bids fair to become a trite remark that the law-maker is but the servant of the thinker. Daily is Statecraft held in less repute.

Even the "Times" can see that "the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies," and that "the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of art and science, the operation of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of State."

The institution that marks a certain stage of civilization — is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. Already has it lost something of its importance.

Excerpts taken from: Herbert Spencer's, The Right to Ignore the State (1820-1903)