The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-19
GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE.


policy, as to speak of the proposition that
| the government shall do the telegraphing busi-
ness of the country as one which raises ques-
ton heretofore foreign to the public history of
the United States, namely, whether the people
can be intrusted with the liberty of attending
to their own concerns in their various relations
of commerce or of social intercourse. The
negative side of this question was long ago
assumed when the postofice establishment in
this country was created. system of postal
telegraphy carried on by the government
would be another step, and not the only one
which had been made in the line of the same
assumption. And such is the close homo
geneity of the idea Of government conveyance
of private kilograms with the idea of govern
ment conveyance of private letters, that it is
not logically possible to admit the suficincy
of the arguments urged in favor of the
present postal system without recommending
that postal telegraphy be added to it. But
all functions of this nature devolved upon the
state, as distinguished from citizens left to
their spontaneous activities, are based upon
false and suicidal theory. Extended in its
make the government the universal common
carrier, but it would introduce the absorbing
management of the government into every
department. of private enterprise, into all the
pursuits and transactions of individuals or of
voluntary associations. If the government
ought to attend to telegraphic and letter
correspondence, it ought also to attend to the
transportation of travellers and merchandise
And having undertaken these offices, why
should it not proceed to take charge of all the
commercial, manufacturing and agricultural
operations of the people, and of all the arts
and amusements, of all the colleges and uni
versities, of all the charitable and religious
institutions of the country?
If the government, as a monopolizing
agency, can do one sort of business better
than it can otherwise be done, there is no
reason why every sort of business should not
be confded to universal government mo-
nopoly. If its service in telegraphy would be
superior to any that is possible under the re-
suits of competitive private energy, there is
equal reason why it should serve the public
in a superior manner in conveying freights
and passengers, in shipping, receiving and
forwarding produce, in running theaters, ho-
tells, restaurants, coffee houses, cot
ton presses and cotton factories, su-
gar mills and sugar refneries, brew
cries and distilleries. In short, the argument
for government interference and monopoly
admits of no final compromise. II must be
rejected as fundamentally unsound, or ac-
cepted in a scope that comprehends the whole
horizon of human affairs. The war is eternal
between the paternal theory Of government,
which we have been here considering. and the
utilitarian theory, which is held by all the
progressive thinkers and liberal statesmen of
the age. According to the former the
DRY, the state or nation is one vast house
hold, of which the millions are always
in the past allotted to infants
and only few grown up people in the
drawing room. These select ones, to use
the apt words Of contemporary English
writer, shave by some good chance got hold
of a few secrets as to how people ought to
live and what they ought to be. But these
secret revelations must never be divulged to
the infantile mind hopelessly grovelling for
ever in its innocent simplicity. All that can
be done is to bring those little ones up to
pretty stimulation of all that is good and true,
to cherish in them few spurious virtues, to
chastise the more cratic trespsssers, to tutor
them at the least into habits of leaning more
and more submissively on their wise precep-
tors" Very naturally, this is, the world over,
the despofs theory for nothing could be more
calculated to perpetuate that infantile aud
indolent condition of the popular mind, in
which the despot finds his surest support as
well as strongest argument, than for the gov
eminent, instead of concentrating its ener-
gies on purely national interests, to busy
itself, above all, in the work of superseding
the spontaneous and healthful play of pri-
vate energy and enterprise in the ordinary
affairs of individuals and in the domestic and
local affairs of communities. To the people
the consequent loss is twofold: first, inferior
service at a larger cost by the superseding
agencies OF the government; second, decay or
suspension of individual forces, and inevita-
bic approach to a state of stagnstion and
dry rot in the heart of the nation.
and scandalous phases of the ruling faction
in the United States which processes devotion
to the principle of the largest freedom, that
about half its legislation is of such chaIac-
ter as to assume that the people, if left to the
free exercise of their own faculties and re-
sources, are incapable of managing their own
affairs, and that they viii certainly rush to
disaster and ruin unless the government
kindly relieves them oftheir liberty to do bu-
siness in their own way.
There could be no more conclusive proof
that this faction, underneath its cant about
freedom and progress, is radically despotic
and retrogressive. 1t, and its works, and
its fallacies must be swept out of existence
before the way will be clear for real freedom
and real progress. Then men will begin to
understand that government interference is
wrong and pernicious wherever it proposes
to do more than to protect life, and property,