Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/112

 sequences of an unintelligent exercise of our voting power, and for this reason we hold on grimly to the right of impeachment if our delegated power is abused.

In patriarchal days, responsibility, and the necessary power to support it, were willingly conceded to one political leader: in the days of autocracy these complementary honors were joined in the person of the king; and if they were not wisely balanced the king lost his head. He admittedly had the power and he had no parliament to which to pass the blame, though he often made a protesting minister his scapegoat. Our predecessors, who lived under this rudimentary form of government, may not have had the fertile mind of the modern reformer, but they recognized more clearly than we, when things went badly, that since all power was vested in one head, then all responsibility was vested in the same head. They proved it neatly more than once by terminating power and responsibility with one stroke of the axe—a very simple demonstration of the truth that power and responsibility are complementary.

This may be briefly expanded for the sake of elucidation by saying that the integrity of the control of economic value is protected by order; that value is made more effective by the creation of common facilities; that the preservation of community order and the creation of community facilities are the only proper offices of government; and that the cost of government is met by taxation.

This assertion, however, may be a little hard to prove to those worthy holders of economic power who are fully conscious of their responsibility in moral terms and who, through fair dealing, just wages and generous benefactions, try to discharge their social obligations. Some of them acquit them selves nobly, doing more than their just proportion, and have created a tradition of aristocracy which has still a pleasant flavor; but it is not with these that society has to deal. There are many others who labor under a delusion that they do their