ONE GOOD 19TH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMIST DESERVES ANOTHER.

The Let-Alone Principal, Simon Newcomb, North American Review, No. CCXXVI, January, 1870.

The seeming inability of a large part of mankind to see in what legitimate personal liberty consists is a little curious. That each individual member of society should be left free to seek his own good in the way he may deem best, and required only not to interfere with the equal rights of his fellow-men, is an idea so simple that it might be supposed that a man could not misundersatand it, whether he accepted it or not. It must be admitted that few misunderstand it in its application to themselves, when their natural liberties are interfered with. When, however, the principle is to be applied to the case of others, many advocates of liberty seem in practice to think that if they grant their fellow-men entire liberty to act as they the grantors think proper, they concede all that can be reasonably asked. . . .

In passing judgment on the principle from the first point of view, it is necessary to begin with some considerations respecting the natural rights of man, and the manner in which these rights are modified by the existence of society. The first argument which will be urged against the ethical basis of the principle is the familiar doctrine, that, in becoming a member of society, the individual gives up some of his natural rights, in order to secure more effectually the enjoyment of the remainder. The prevailing tendnecy, it seems to us, in greatly to exaggerate the extent of this surrender. There is undoubtedly a sense in which the individual may be said to give up all his rights to society. Practically, the individual is powerless in the hands of society, which will do with him as it pleases. He must therefore yield whatever society chooses to demand of him, and the liberty which may be left him he enjoys only on sufference. In a sense, therefore, that which is thus enjoyed is not so much a right as a favor, and the individual has strictly no rights at all left. Such a theory of the relation of the individual to the state was not unfamiliar to the ancients, but we conceive that no one will now desire to carry the doctrine of a surrender of rights so far. We must therefore admit that the power of society over the individual is limited by some moral law, binding on the former. When we speak, therefore, of the rights of the individual, we do not mean his legal rights, as defined by the legislative power of society, but his natural and moral rights as defined by the reason and the conscience of enlightened and civilized man.

Newcomb was the Richard Posner of his day. Self-taught, he became one of the foremost astronomers of his time, and a professor at John Hopkins, bringing mathematical rigor to his science. Later, he did the same for economics. Among many other things, including a lunar crater, a martian crater and a minor planet, the USS Simon Newcomb was named after him.

My favorite Newcomb quote: "The combined willingness and ability of a number of persons in the community to give dimes to beggars constitutes a demand for beggary, just as much as if an advertisement, 'Beggars wanted, liberal alms guaranteed,' was conspicuously inserted in the columns of a newspaper." Posted by David Cohen at July 2, 2003 8:54 PM