Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 093.jpg

Rh the government, whose power is generally irresistible, by any efforts that can be made by individuals, has so much more baneful an effect on the springs of national prosperity, than almost any degree of lawlessness and turbulence under free institutions. * * * but no countries in which the people were exposed without limit to arbitrary exactions from the officers of government, ever yet continued to have industry or wealth."  Continuing, Mr. Mill says:  "All that governments can do in these emergencies, is to counsel a general moderation in consumption, and to interdict such kinds of it as are not of primary importance. * * * A limitation of competition, however partial, may have mischievous effects quite disproportioned to the apparent cause. * * * When relieved from the immediate stimulus of competition, producers and dealers grow indifferent to the dictates of their ultimate pecuniary interest; preferring to the most hopeful prospects, the present ease of adhering to routine."

And Mr. Mill forcibly points out how deleterious it is always to deprive people of the education, the creation of energy, independence and self-control, that result from their freely conducting their own business affairs: "There cannot be," he says, a combination of circumstances more dangerous to human welfare, than that in which intelligence and talent are maintained at a high standard within a governing corporation, but starved and discouraged outside the pale. Such a system, more completely than any other, embodies the idea of despotism.

Out of a multitude of like considerations, two, at