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Voluntaryism: the Political Thought of Auberon Herbert

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Voluntaryism: the Political Thought of Auberon Herbert VOLUNTARYISM: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF AUBERON HERBERT ERIC MACK Deportment o/Philosophy, Tulane Universily Auberon Herbert (1838- 1906) was one of the in history and jurisprudence. In 1865, as a Con- distinctive figures in the profound and wide servative, he unsuccessfully sought a seat in the ranging intellectual debate which took place House of Commons. By 1868, however, he was during the late Victorian age. It was during this seeking a Parliamentary seat, again unsuc- period, in the intellectual and social ferment of cessfully, as a Liberal. Finally, in 1870, Herbert the 1880s and 1890s, that Herbert formulated successfully contested a by-election and entered and expounded voluntaryism, his system of the Commons as a Liberal representing Not- "thorough" individualism. Carrying natural tingham. Throughout this period one of rights theory to its logical limits, Herbert Herbert's major occupations seems to have demanded complete social and economic been observing wars. He spent much time near freedom for all non-coercive individuals and the front during the Prusso-Danish, Franco- the radical restriction of the use of force to the Prussian, and American Civil wars. He only role of protecting those freedoms - including missed viewing the Austro-Prussian war of the freedom of peaceful persons to withhold 1866 "owing to its short duration".''' In the support from any or all state activities. All course of the Prusso-Danish war his cooperative activity must be founded upon the courageous aid to wounded Danish troops led free agreement of all those parties whose to his decoration by the Danish government. rightful possessions are involved. Like many With.respect to the Civil War, he wrote, "I am other Victorian figures, Herbert had wide- very glad that slavery is done away with, but I ranging interests. He wrote poetry and accounts think the manner is very bad and wrong". of his travels. And the subjects of his non- Whether he meant by this to emphasize the political essays included religion, clean air and hypocrisy of the North, which had always forest conservation. But Herbert's major ef- preached "the sacredness of revolution", or forts were devoted to his writings in political meant that even slavery should not be forcibly theory. This has been long neglected and it is trampled out is unclear."' For, as we shall see, the purpose of this essay to begin to redress that there is in Herbert a pacifist tendency toward wrong.''' denouncing the use of all force - even force Auberon Herbert was by birth and marriage directed against force. Herbert's accounts of a well-placed member of the British aristocracy. these excursions illustrate how safe war was in He was educated at Eton and at St. John's Col- the nineteenth century for non-combatants - lege, Oxford. As a young man be held commis- at least for aristocratic English non- sions in the army for several years and served combatants. briefly with the 7th Hussars in India (1860). In During his time in the House of Commons, a letter from India he expresses his opposition Herbert's most noteworthy political acts were to the caste system while maintaining that the to join Sir Charles Dilke in his declaration of British attempt to eliminate the system forcibly republicanism and to support Joseph Arch's at- was likely to "trample the evil in, not out".['l tempts to form an agricultural laborer's union. On his return to Oxford he formed several Con- Although, in hindsight, many of Herbert's ac- servative debating societies, was elected a tions and words during the sixties and early Fellow of St. John's, and lectured occasionally seventies can be read as harbingers of his later, 300 ERIC MACK consistent, libertarianism, he was in reality writings of his mentor, Herbert Spencer, and throughout this period lacking in any consistent had resolved to do full justice to "the moral set of political principles. During this period, side" of the case for a society of fully free and for .instance, he supported compulsory State voluntarily cooperative individuals.['' And education - albeit with strong insistence on its while Spencer grew more and more crusty, con- being religiously neutral. servative and pessimistic during the last decades In late 1873, Herbert met and was much im- of the nineteenth century, Herbert, who con- pressed by Herbert Spencer. As he recounts in tinued to think of himself as Spencer's disciple, "Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine", a study remained idealistic, radical and hopeful. And of Spencer led to the insight that, while he willingly addressed, he refused to join, such organizations as the Liberty and Property . thinking and acting for others had always hindered, not helped, the real progress; that all Defense League which he felt to be "a little forms of compulsion deadened the living forces in a more warmly attached to the fair sister Proper- nation; that every evil violently stamped out still per- ty than . to the fair sister Liberty".ts1 sisted, almost always in a worse form, when driven out of sight, and festered under the surface. Similarly, Herbert held himself separate from I no longer believed that the handful of us - the Personal Rights Association whose chief however well-intentioned we might be - spending mover, J. H. Levy, favored compulsory taxa- our nights in the House, could manufacture the life of a nation, could endow it out of hand with hap- tion for the funding of State protective ac- piness, wisdom, and prosperity, and clothe it in all tivities. With the exception of the in- the virtues."' dividualistic "reasonable anarchists", Herbert However, it was even before this intellectual :hought of himself as occupying the extreme transformation that Herbert had decided, left wing of the individualist camp, i.e. the wing perhaps out of disgust with party politics or that was most willing to carry liberty uncertainty about his own convictions, not to furthe~t."~' stand for re-election in 1874. Later, in 1879, he In 1885 Herbert sought to establish a Party again sought Liberal support to regain a seat of Individual Liberty and under this rubric he from Nottingham. But at that point his uncom- gave addresses across England. His central promising individualist radicalism was not ac- theoretical essay, The Right and Wrong of ceptable to the majority of the Central Council Compulsion by the State, was written as a state- of the Liberal Union of Nottingham. In the in- ment of the bases for, the character of, and the terim, he had organized, in 1877, "The Per- implications of, the principles of this Party. sonal Rights and Self-Help Association". And, Again with the aim of advancing libertarian in 1878, he had been one of the chief organizers opinion, Herbert published the weekly (later along with William Morris[a' of the anti- changed to monthly) paper, Free Life, "The Jingoism rallies in Hyde Park against war with Organ of Voluntary Taxation and the Volun- Russia. Along with other consistent classical tary State", from 1890 to 1901. Free Life was liberals, Herbert repeatedly took anti- devoted to "One Fight More - The Best and imperialist stands. He consistently called for the Last" -the fight against the aggressive use Irish self-determination. In the early 1880s, he of force which is "a mere survival of bar- opposed British intervention in Egypt as a use barism, a mere perpetuation of slavery under of the power of the nation to guarantee the new names, against which the reason and moral results of particular speculations. And, later, he sense of the civilized world have to be called in- opposed the Boer War."' to rebellion".'"' Also during the 1890s. In 1880, following his rejection by the Herbert engaged in lengthy published ex- Liberals of Nottingham, Herbert turned to the changes with three prominent socialists of his publication of addresses, essays, and books in day, E. Belfort Bax, Grant Allen and J. A. defense of consistent individualism and against Hobson.1"' Herbert continued to write and all forms of political regimentation. Even in speak into this century and two of his best 1877, Auberon Herbert had been disturbed by essays, "Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine" "a constant undertone of cynicism" in the and "A Plea for Voluntaryism", were written VOLUNTARYISM: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF AUBERON HERBERT 301 in 1906 - the last year of his life. claim that each individual has a right to judge In all his mature writings Auberon Herbert of his own happiness with the conclusion that defended a Lockean -Spencerian conception each individual has a special claim over the use of natural rights according to which each per- of his own faculties in the implementation of son has a right to his own person, his mind and those judgments. body, and hence to his own labor. Further- In his most systematic work, The Right and more, each person has a right to the products of Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Herbert the productive employment of his labor and adds several further arguments for rights. He faculties. Since each person has these rights, again ties the individual's claim to freedom to each is under a moral obligation to respect these the conditions necessary for the individual's rights in all others. In virtue of each person's well-being. But here the emphasis is on moral sovereignty over himself, each individual must well-being. Freedom is presented as both a consent to any activity which directly affects his causal and a logical precondition of a man's ac- person or property before any such activity can tions being truly self-beneficial - be morally legitimate. Specifically, each must '4.
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