第5章 CHAPTER 1(5)

If people are mostly so little aware how completely, during the greaterpart of the duration of our species, the law of force was the avowed ruleof general conduct, any other being only a special and exceptional consequenceof peculiar ties -- and from how very recent a date it is that the affairsof society in general have been even pretended to be regulated accordingto any moral law; as little do people remember or consider, how institutionsand customs which never had any ground but the law of force, last on intoages and states of general opinion which never would have permitted theirfirst establishment. Less than forty years ago, Englishmen might still bylaw hold human beings in bondage as saleable property: within the presentcentury they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work them literallyto death. This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned bythose who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which,of all others presents features the most revolting to the feelings of allwho look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilised and ChristianEngland within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-SaxonAmerica three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave-trade,and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice betweenslave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment againstit, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interestin favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: forits motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profitedby it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the naturalfeeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigatedabhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost superfluous to refer toany other: but consider the long duration of absolute monarchy. In Englandat present it is the almost universal conviction that military despotismis a case of the law of force, having no other origin or justification. Yetin all the great nations of Europe except England it either still exists,or has only just ceased to exist, and has even now a strong party favourableto it in all ranks of the people, especially among persons of station andconsequence. Such is the power of an established system, even when far fromuniversal; when not only in almost every period of history there have beengreat and well-known examples of the contrary system, but these have almostinvariably been afforded by the most illustrious and most prosperous communities.

In this case, too, the possessor of the undue power, the person directlyinterested in it, is only one person, while those who are subject to it andsuffer from it are literally all the rest. The yoke is naturally and necessarilyhumiliating to all persons, except the one who is on the throne, togetherwith, at most, the one who expects to succeed to it. How different are thesecases from that of the power of men over women! *I am not now prejudgingthe question-of its justifiableness. I am showing how vastly more permanentit could not but be, even if not justifiable, than these other dominationswhich have nevertheless lasted down to our own time. Whatever gratificationof pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interestin its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but commonto the whole male sex. Instead of being, to most of its supporters) a thingdesirable chiefly in the abstract, or, like the political ends usually contendedfor by factions, of little private importance to any but the leaders; itcomes home to the person and hearth of every male head of a family, and ofeveryone who looks forward to being so. The clodhopper exercises, or is toexercise, his share of the power equally with the highest nobleman. And thecase is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for everyonewho desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest to him, withwhom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in common and inwhom any independence of his authority is oftenest likely to interfere withhis individual preferences. If, in the other cases specified, powers manifestlygrounded only on force, and having so much less to support them, are so slowlyand with so much difficulty got rid of, much more must it be so with this,even if it rests on no better foundation than those. We must consider, too,that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater thanin any other, to prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjectslives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of oneof the masters in closer intimacy with him than with any of her fellow-subjects;with no means of combining against him, no power of even locally over masteringhim, and, on the other hand, with the strongest motives for seeking his favourand avoiding to give him offence. In struggles for political emancipation,everybody knows how often its champions are bought off by bribes, or dauntedby terrors. In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class isin a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. In setting up thestandard of resistance, a large number of the leaders, and still more ofthe followers, must make an almost complete sacrifice of the pleasures orthe alleviations of their own individual lot. If ever any system of privilegeand enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the those who arekept down by it, this has. I have not yet shown that it is a wrong system: but everyone who is capable of thinking on the subject must see that evenif it is, it was certain to outlast all other forms of unjust authority.