Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/234

 SPECULATIVE LEGISLATION

Germans have lately invented a new department of social interest — Socialpolitik — which is neither politics, political economy, nor social science; it is in fact a department of speculation as to legislative measures which might be adopted to alter existing social relations. Any legislation which does not proceed out of antecedents, but is invented in order to attain to ideals, is necessarily speculative; it deals with unverified and unverifiable propositions and lacks all guarantees of its practicability or of the nature of its results. It is, however, very easy and fascinating to plan such legislation; the enterprise is sure to be popular and remonstrances against it are sure to produce irritation. Such remonstrances imply that the speculators have undertaken too much or are too confident and self-assured.

Nothing can be more antagonistic to the spirit of Anglo-American law than speculative legislation. That law is marked by slow and careful growth, historic continuity, practical sense, and aversion to all dogmatism and abstractionism. While it is as broad in its general maxims and generalizations as the facts will warrant and bold enough to draw all the deductions which legitimately follow, it refuses to assimilate unverifiable elements.

Speculative legislation is really advocated by assertions which are predictions, and it is impossible to meet it by arguments which are other than contradictory predictions. But all men of sober thought and scholarly responsibility dislike to argue by predictions.

The most remarkable case of speculative legislation