When any group of men has a strong corporate consciousness—­such as belongs, for example, to a nation or a trade or a religious body—­liberty demands that it should be free to decide for itself all matters which are of great importance to the outside world.  This is the basis of the universal claim for national independence.  But nations are by no means the only groups which ought to have self-government for their internal concerns.  And nations, like other groups, ought not to have complete liberty of action in matters which are of equal concern to foreign nations.  Liberty demands self-government, but not the right to interfere with others.  The greatest degree of liberty is not secured by anarchy.  The reconciliation of liberty with government is a difficult problem, but it is one which any political theory must face.

The essence of government is the use of force in accordance with law to secure certain ends which the holders of power consider desirable.  The coercion of an individual or a group by force is always in itself more or less harmful.  But if there were no government, the result would not be an absence of force in men’s relations to each other; it would merely be the exercise of force by those who had strong predatory instincts, necessitating either slavery or a perpetual readiness to repel force with force on the part of those whose instincts were less violent.  This is the state of affairs at present in international relations, owing to the fact that no international government exists.  The results of anarchy between states should suffice to persuade us that anarchism has no solution to offer for the evils of the world.

There is probably one purpose, and only one, for which the use of force by a government is beneficent, and that is to diminish the total amount of force used m the world.  It is clear, for example, that the legal prohibition of murder diminishes the total amount of violence in the world.  And no one would maintain that parents should have unlimited freedom to ill-treat their children.  So long as some men wish to do violence to others, there cannot be complete liberty, for either the wish to do violence must be restrained, or the victims must be left to suffer.  For this reason, although individuals and societies should have the utmost freedom as regards their own affairs, they ought not to have complete freedom as regards their dealings with others.  To give freedom to the strong to oppress the weak is not the way to secure the greatest possible amount of freedom in the world.  This is the basis of the socialist revolt against the kind of freedom which used to be advocated by laissez-faire economists.