WHAT IS " VOLUNTARYISM " ?
Timex who appose useful measures beeause they rely on "the Vo- luntary principle" frequently advocate some plan which constrains the people and obstructs their free volition. Do not, they say, face education on the people, but leave it to voluntary effort. Now, it is found that in a vast number of cases there is no ef- fart. Besides, education is not offered for those who exercise the volition—the parents, guardians, and masters—but for children, who have no present freedom, but who have to bear the future consequences. The Voluntaries claim for parents, guardians, and masters, free will to prevent children from being educated : the advocates of public education say, We will open the schools, and you shall not prevent the children from coming, if they will learn. Surely this is the Voluntary principle ? The law requires owners of factories to fence off dangerous parts Of the machinery, and Voluntaryism exclaims against an " inter- ference " which presumes to supersede the voluntary care of the workpeople for their own limbs and lives. But the workpeople in a mill cannot determine whether or not the machinery 'shall be boxed; it is not in human nature to keep a perpetual watch al- ways to avoid contact with dangerous machinery familiarized to the sense; and the members of the working class exercise no vo- lition in stopping away from ill-guarded mills. It is with them only a choice between certain death by want, or the chance of ileath by accident. The compulsion to box off machinery dimin- ishes the degree of involuntary sufferance. Medical men cannot obtain the confidence of their patients un- less they have some testimonial of their capacity : shall they be permitted to show false or worthless testimonials, inducing patients to trust themselves involuntarily to disguised 9.uacks, and °blipping the better part of the profession to adopt inferior standards? Such a permission would saorifice the voluntary to the involuntary. Laws enabling men to net together extend the working of genu- ine voluntary principles ; laws restraining frauds check the ex- tension of involuntary submission to undesirable conditions. If we may coin a nickname for the inverse burlesque of Voluntary- ism, we may say, that to prevent the passing of laws which faci- litate cooperation, which protect helplessness, and which check fraud, encourages Noluntoryinn ; and those-who claim for them- selves the _title of Voluntaries might more fitly be called Nolun- taries.
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