The Profitless Game of Politics – Auberon Herbert, 10/25/1895
What is this thing power, which you are so keen to possess over others; so ready to let others possess over you?
When you have defeated your rivals, and at the cost of much time and labor have won your prize, are you sure
that it is worth the winning? Is power in itself a desirable thing? Will it make you or anybody else happier? Is it
a good thing, or a necessary thing, that some of us should live our lives forcing our opinions on others, and that
these others should live their lives with our opinions forced on them? Can power over each other make a true,
a right, and a happy relation between men and men, on enduring foundations? Power is the right to inflict my
opinion—my sense of right—upon my neighbor; liberty is the right to follow my opinion—my sense of right. Do
you really mean that you are ready to devote your lives to serve power, and not liberty? Let us think the matter
out. Ask the greatest of all questions. Tell me to whom do you belong? Do you belong to yourselves; or do you
belong to majorities, and governments, and officials? Do you exist in the world as a bit of government material,
upon which some six hundred and odd gentlemen, sitting up at Westminster [or the Capitol,] may practice all
their fancies and opinions, as they like; may restrict and regulate, may fine and imprison, as they like; and out
of whose property they may help themselves as liberally as they like, for purposes of which you may approve or
disapprove—in a word, are your body and mind the property of the six hundred and odd Westminster [or Capitol]
gentlemen, whose very names you probably do not know; or are they your own property, flesh of your own flesh,
life of your own life, that no ruler, or law-maker, or government, or majority, have any right to take from you?
And what about these worthy six hundred and odd gentlemen themselves? Who are they? Where have they
come from? What title-deeds can they show for the ownership of others? What have they ever done to have
power over all bodies and minds? Well, that is a question which it is very hard to answer.
It is altogether beyond my skill. All I can say is, that the friends and followers of these six hundred excellent gentlemen
have taken the trouble to drop ballot papers into ballot-boxes, with marks or crosses placed upon them, that somebody
has taken the trouble to count these marks or crosses, and that the six hundred excellent gentlemen are to be found
sitting and talking and voting in a big room somewhere up in London [or Washington.] But why dropping ballot papers
into ballot-boxes, and then counting the ballot papers, and then sitting and talking in a big room up in London [or
Washington,] should make any six hundred excellent gentlemen the owners of your body and your mind, or my body
and my mind, of your property and my property, is a matter that I don’t in the least understand, and cannot undertake
to explain. If you were to fill my house full of silver and gold, on condition of my finding satisfactory reasons for the
six hundred excellent gentlemen, who sit in their big room and believe that they own your body, your mind, and your
property, I could not find them. Some ostriches are said to devour four-inch nails, and some persons can believe
whatever the politicians, who wander up and down the country, may happen to tell them, as readily as the ostriches
can swallow the four-inch nails. But perhaps you have a more tender digestion than the ostriches, and therefore do
not take your place among those who are prepared to believe that a man has so little to do with the ownership of
himself that any six hundred excellent gentlemen, with or without the ballot papers and the big room, should undertake
the control of his body and mind for him, as if that body and mind belonged to them, and not to him. Well, if you are
not like the ostriches, and ready to accept as good gospel all that the wandering politicians, looking for seats in the
big room somewhere up in London [or Washington,] find to say, let me try to persuade you of the great truth that the
real business of each man is to guide and control himself and not his neighbor, and that the six hundred excellent
gentlemen are little else than pure mischief-makers when they undertake to put the world in their coat pocket, and
tell us all what we are to do and to be. Now let me prevent any misunderstanding.
I do not deny that the voting paper, and the talking room, may be good things in a certain limited way; but what I do
say is that they are very small and unimportant things indeed when compared with the right of every individual to be
the owner of his own body and mind. I affirm that the self-ownership of every individual is the first and highest of all
human concerns. I affirm that everything else, all questions of comfort, expediency, convenience, and even so-called
safety, must give place to this great right, and stand out of its way. I affirm that the six hundred and odd Westminster
[or Capitol] gentlemen are very unimportant persons indeed when weighed against the rights of each individual over
his own body and mind; that all happiness, all self-respect, all the nobler side of existence, depend upon this self-
ownership; that all things must be counted as dross in comparison with it; that under no circumstances do we dare
to strip ourselves of it, and that we are no more justified for the sake of any opinion of our own or any interest of our
own in depriving others of it, than Protestants and Catholics in old days were justified in burning each other for the
sake of their different creeds. Of what use can any man be in this world of ours, when you have once taken away his
self-guidance and self-ownership? I don’t care what the plea may be—the lovers of power may call it public good,
or public safety, or philanthropy, or the will of the majority, or any other fine thing that they choose; I only know that
the man from whom you have taken self-guidance and free choice and free judgment, the man whom you have tied
up by your restrictions, the man on whom you have laid your compulsory burdens, the man on whom you practice
your official dogmas, is but a poor degraded and mutilated wretch, from whom you have taken the heart of his
manhood, and whom you have cast down from his true rank in nature.
I can only ask in the old words, What shall it profit a man whether he be the humblest or the greatest, the richest or
the poorest among us, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul—and what is the losing of your own self-
guidance, your own responsibility, your own free choice between the good and the evil, your power of speaking “Yes”
or “No” as regards your own happiness, but the loss of soul? What soul is left for the man who deliberately plunges
into the great game of politics, who pursues and worships power, who stakes on the great public gaming table his
own liberty against the liberty of others, who acknowledges the deadly falsehood that it is good for a nation to split
itself into two crowds—the crowd that owns, and the crowd that is owned? Can you not see the lie that runs through
the whole of this wretched business? Has not each one of us a body and mind of his own, and how shall he ever
hand over the ownership of this body and mind to others; how shall he ever join with them in taking this ownership
from his neighbor? Can you not see that the fact of self-ownership is vital to every individual, is a sacred, unalterable
fact, and that no numbers, though they exceeded the grains of sand on the seashore, no laws, no institutions,
no Parliaments, can touch or alter the fact? The self-ownership of each individual is the supreme fact of human
existence, and all other human facts are secondary to it. We may neglect and deny and ridicule this great right
for our little season, if so we choose, but we cannot banish it out of existence. So long as the race exists, so long
also will it exist. It is unalterable and eternal. It will live us down, and every other generation down until the day
comes in which it is acknowledged and reverenced. Nature has stamped it in the very constitution of our separate
minds and bodies and still more deeply in the heart itself. It is vain to wage war against it. You shall never overthrow
it. Neither the edicts of emperors, or their bayonets, neither the votes of majorities, nor laws made in parliaments,
neither force nor cunning, can prevail against it.
To give up our own self-guidance is to be something less than men, and that is the one thing that we cannot
consent to be. Cling fast then under all circumstances to self-ownership. Refuse all bribes for its sake. Accept
nothing which will weaken self-ownership in you or in any other man. If the politician of any party comes to you
and offers to make your position better, to render you any service, to build up any public system, by placing
restrictions either upon yourselves or upon others, refuse his offer. He has no true commission to do these
things. He has no commission to dispense good and evil and to make you dependent on himself and his gifts.
His gifts are an impertinence and a knavery. The one service and the only one he can perform for you is to
increase liberty; to get rid of large bits of his own handiwork, and to surround self-ownership and the consent
of each person as regards his own actions with efficient protection.
