Reverting, then, to the analogy drawn at the outset, we must say that the legislator is morally blameless or morally blameworthy, according as he has or has not acquainted himself with these several classes of facts. A physician who, after years of study, has gained a competent knowledge of physiology, pathology and therapeutics, is not held criminally responsible if a man dies under his treatment: he has prepared himself as well as he can, and has acted to the best of his judgment. Similarly the legislator whose measures produce evil instead of good, notwithstanding the extensive and methodic inquiries which helped him to decide, cannot be held to have committed more than an error of reasoning. Contrariwise, the legislator who is wholly or in great part uninformed concerning these masses of facts which he must examine before his opinion on a proposed law can be of any value, and who nevertheless helps to pass that law, can no more be absolved if misery and mortality result, than the journeyman druggist can be absolved when death is caused by the medicine he ignorantly prescribes.
NOTES:
1. Political Institution, sections 437, 573.
2. Ibid., sections 471-3.
3. Lanfrey. See also Study of Sociology, p. 42, and Appendix.
4. Constitutional History of England, ii. p. 617.
5. Lecky, Rationalism, ii. 293-4.
6. De Tocqueville, The State of Society in France before the Revolution, p. 421.
7. Young's Travels, i. 128-9.
8. Craik's History of British Commerce, i. 134.
9. Ibid., 136-7.
10. Ibid., 137.
11. Mensch, iii, p. 225.
12. The Nineteenth Century, February, 1883.
13. "The Statistics of Legislation" By F.H. Jansen, Esq., F.L.S., Vice-President ofthe Incorporated Law Society.
14. Fire Surveys; or, a Summary of the Principles to be observed in Estimating the Risk of Buildings.
15. See Times, October 6, 1874, where other instances are given.
16. The State in its Relation to Trade, by Sir Thomas Farrer, p.
147.
17. Ibid., p. 149.
18. Hansard, vol. clvi., p. 718, and vol. clvii., p. 4464.
19. Letter of an Ediburgh M.D. in Times of 17th January, 1876, verifying other testimonies; one of which I had previously cited concerning Windsor, where, as in Edinburgh, there was absolutely no typhoid in the undrained parts, while it was very fatal in the drained parts. Study in Sociology, chap. i., notes.
20. I say this partly from personal knowledge; having now before me memoranada made 25 years ago, concerning such results produced under my own observation. Verifying facts have recently been given by Sir Richard Cross in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1884, p. 155.
21. Nicholl's History of English Poor Law, ii. p. 252.
22. See Times, March 31, 1863.
23. In these paragraphs are contained just a few additional examples. Numbers which I have before given in books and essays, will be found in Social Statics (1851): "Over-Legislation"(1853); "Representative Government" (1857); "Specialized Administration" (1871); Study of Sociology (1873), and Postscript to ditto (1880); besides cases in smaller essays.
24. On the Value of Political Economy to Mankind. by A.N.
Cummings; pp. 47, 48.
25. The saying of Emerson that most people can understand a principle only when its light falls on a fact, induces me here to cite a fact which may carry home the above principle to those on whom, in its abstract form, it will produce no effect. It rarely happens that the amount of evil caused by fostering the vicious and good-for-nothing can be estimated. But in America, at a meeting of the States Charities Aid Association, held on December 18, 1874, a startling instance was given in detail by Dr Harris.
It was furnished by a county on the Upper Hudson, remarkable for the ratio of crime and poverty to population. Generations ago there had existed a certain "gutter-child," as she would be here called, known as "Margaret," who proved to be the prolific mother of a prolific race. Besides great numbers of idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, and prostitutes, "the county records show two hundred of her descendants who have been criminals." Was it kindness or cruelty which, generation after generation, enabled these to multiply and become an increasing curse to the society around them? (For particulars see the Jukes: a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, by R.L.
Dugdale, New York; Putnams.)
26. Mr Chamberlain in Fortnightly Review, December, 1883, p. 772.
