As another year draws to a close and local governments around Pennsylvania solidify their fiscal and operational plans for the coming new year, we thought it apropos to revisit the sentiments of Herbert Spencer.
To many, Spencer, the 19th– and early 20th-century philosopher, perhaps is best known for the theory of “social Darwinism” and, with it, evolution. In fact, it was Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.”
But Spencer, who, by the way, was a mentor to Scottish steel magnate and, later, great Pittsburgh philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, also was known for his seminal 1843 writing on “The Proper Sphere of Government.”
It was lengthy. It was robust. And it was a brilliantly argued treatise, in 12 “letters,” first published in the U.K.’s “The Nonconformist.”
Please indulge us as we share some brief, select passages from Spencer’s concise conclusion:
“(O)ne thing is certain: A definition of the duty of the state there must be.
“It needs no argument to prove that there is a boundary beyond which no legislative control should pass—that there are individual and social requirements whose fulfillment will be better secured by moral stimulus and voluntary exertion, than by any artificial regulations—that between the two extremes of its possible power, the everything and the nothing with which a government might be entrusted, there must be some point which both principle and policy indicate as its proper limitation.”
Continued Spencer:
“This point, this boundary, it behooves every man to fix for himself; and if he disagrees with the definition, as above expressed, consistency demands that he should make one for himself. If he wishes to avoid the imputation of political empiricism, he must ascertain the nature and intent of that national organ called the legislature, ere he seeks to prescribe its actions.
“Before he ventures to entertain another opinion upon what a government should do, he must first settle for himself the question—What is a government for?”
And Spencer answered that question most eloquently:
“Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man – to protect person and property – to prevent the aggression of the powerful upon the week – in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”
Contemporary leaders, of course will scoff, viscerally, at what they’ll call Spencer’s “old think,” if not “naïve” pronouncement. It is radical governance minimalism bordering on a suicide pact, they might bark.
More’s the pity.
But Spencer’s words – his succinct baseline of what government’s proper sphere should be – cannot be dismissed. And our leaders, though filled with hubris and confusing what government is for with what they mistakenly believe it should do, would be wise to recalibrate their thinking.
Sadly, that’s beyond their intellectual wheelhouse.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
