This evening I am doing a recorded conversation with Bishop Hill, and by way of preparation have been rootling around in his archives. And I just came across this, which the Bishop posted on November 19th 2006:
In this connexion the thing to be remarked is that the Whigs proceeded by the negative method of repealing existing laws, not by the positive method of making new ones. They combed the Statute-book, and when they found a statute which bore against “the liberty of the subject” they simply repealed it and left the page blank. This purgation ran up into the thousands. In 1873 the secretary of the Law Society estimated that out of the 18,110 Acts which had been passed since the reign of Henry III, four-fifths had been wholly or partially repealed.
Excellent, apart from the odd spelling of “connection”.
That’s not by Bishop Hill himself. It was recycled from somewhere called “Outside Story”, the link to which no longer works. But there’s no reason to doubt theis particular story, which should now inspire us all. For too long we have been ruled by politicians who measured their success by how many laws they could pass. Because of these fools, we now need politicians who measure their success by how many laws they can unpass.
Bishop Hill’s latest posting, as I write this, is to this. Well worth reading. Climategate is not nearly over. It is just getting into its stride. At Copenhagen, lots of laws, seemingly unshiftable from then on, will be made, maybe not as many as would have happened without Climategate, but still, most of us here surely fear, a lot. But the point is: laws can be unmade. There can be, and there must soon be, another great purgation.
I believe John Redwood MP had the job of looking for law to repeal under Michael Howard. An odd sort of job until you realise just how much legislation is being created by the government. Since we can’t need that much law it must be the regime that needs it.
Redwood also produced ‘Freeing Britain to Compete’ in 2007 – which, amongst other things, suggested a host of laws for repeal. (Unions got upset with that – so he must have picked a few good ‘uns.)
That would be a great thing to see happen, and it could easily be done:
Someone could write on a website an action that in any sane society we should be able to do without there being any laws governing that action, e.g. Babysit for my neighbour once a week.
Liberty loving people with legal expertise could write out any law which hinders that action from taking place.
Politicians could read the website, repeal the laws that are mentioned and claim credit for freeing Britain from a tyranny of red tape.
One other suggestion would be to enact one of the most under-rated Biblical laws around: Deuteronomy 17:18. That would prevent the legislature from writing too many new and pointless laws.
There’s been a bit of an inflexion in the spelling of connexion.
Which puts a different complexion on your complaint.
A quick but of research (Googling purgation whig 1873) – reveals the passage mentioned here, from a tome reputed to be from the 1930s.
The gist of the rest of the article seems very familiar – ‘liberals gone wild’
“Connexion” is just an old-fashioned spelling, a bit like “shew” for “show”.
One thing I wish would happen is that the British would stop so damned sheeplike. When a school insists that parents who want to accompany the tinies to a carol concert need to be CRB checked, why do they all go along with it? I wouldn’t.
A very good post Brian.
Yes – the way to deal with bad statutes and regulations is to REPEAL them, not to add new statutes and regulations to “reform” them.
Just as the way to deal with government spending is not to “spend the money better” – it is to STOP SPENDING THE MONEY.
Also your date was a good one – already in 1873 bad things were happening (such as the Forster Education Act of 1870), but a lot of good things had happended over the previous decades also.
The great repeals of statutes stated by Edmund Burke who (for example) managed to get all the statutes concerning “engrossing and forstalling” repealed, has started up again after the wars with Revolutionary France – and from 1815 to 1874 a massive amount of deregulation (real deregulation) was done. Although some bad new statutes were also passed.
However, from 1875 no real deregulation occurs – there is just endless new statutes and regulations. With both the Conservative and Liberal parties being led (in policy) by statists – in spite of the leaders of both of these parties (Lord Sailsbury and Gladstone) OPPOSING the move towards ever greater statism.
The younger men in the cabinet and shadow cabinet tended to be statists and freedom stopped being a living movement trying to reduce the size and scope of the state, but became a grim rear guard action just trying to slow down the growth of statism.
A hard look at what was being taught in the leading public schools, and in Oxford and Cambrige, would be in order.
For that is where these younger men mostly got their ideas.
Although there is also the international factor – Bismark and those who followed him in other countries were setting the pace for statism in the world.
People in all nations (including the United States) were looking at Bismark and Prussia (and then Germany) with awe.
Whereas the free market seemed discredited by the economic crises of the mid 1870’s – a credit money banking crises that hit all nations.
The more things change the more they ……
In the U S it would be beneficial to amend our constitution to provide that all legislation shall have a shelf life of no more than 10 years; and, that all ineffect at the effective date of the amendment shall expire in 5 years.
Think of how busy that would keep the chipmuncks just tracking what needed to be re-done, rather than dropping new piles of what is already deep upon us.
A purge of statutes AND a purge of public employment would go well together.
The chance of Dave doing either is zero.
RRS – why not enforce the Constitution you already have?
Until a way is figured out to actually enforce the United States Constitution (whose limits on what government can spend money on and what regulations it can pass have been a dead letter since the 1930’s) adding to it seems a bit pointless.
Oddly enough relying on a govenment appointed court of judges has not worked out too well.
“That would be a great thing to see happen, and it could easily be done:
Someone could write on a website an action that in any sane society we should be able to do without there being any laws governing that action, e.g. Babysit for my neighbour once a week.
Liberty loving people with legal expertise could write out any law which hinders that action from taking place.
Politicians could read the website, repeal the laws that are mentioned and claim credit for freeing Britain from a tyranny of red tape. ”
Douglas Carswell is a little ahead of you: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Great_Repeal_Bill
Add your clauses there!
Paul Marks puts his finger firmly on the problem, again! – “RRS – why not enforce the Constitution you already have?”
Indeed!
This points to what may be the fatal internal contradiction in Libertarianism — the need for effective (and possibly at times violent) collective action to ensure individual freedom.
It may be that the only way to enforce something like the US Constitution would be to restrict voting rights (only voting, not citizenship) to those with skin in the game — net tax payers, retired military, and maybe a few others. Prohibition of a permanent Political Class by disqualifying sitting elected persons from being elected to any position would also help.
But imposing those kinds of changes to make the US Constitution work is not likely to be possible — absent stringent collective action backed by the credible threat of force.
Which brings us back to the internal contradiction in Libertarianism.
Old English that looks rather contemporary? Bad spelling? Hmm >-) I meant to ask for a few days now about this:
“The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property.”
Ps.: if you find any typos or grammatical mistakes in this post, you are entitled to keep them.
“Several property” means individually owned rather than collectively owned. It’s also a ‘code phrase’ for those in the know that marks this website as devotees of Frederic Hayek 🙂
Alarmist Eye Candy:
Magic Tricks Explained http://i49.tinypic.com/2mpg0tz.jpg
Central England Don’t Panic! http://i48.tinypic.com/xfvoyg.jpg
“Value-Added” Data http://i46.tinypic.com/t63qxe.jpg
“Liberalism, Properly So Called” by Albert Jay Nock, a writer for “the Nation” and “the Atlantic”
According to some online encyclopedia, he “argued that the New Deal was merely a pretext for the federal government to increase its control over society”
I quite like using somewhat archaic spellings myself, like connexion or gaol.
ENFORCE a Constitution?
I suppose that phrase is actually meant to refer to enforcing the intents and meanings of of its wordings upon those who purport to act under its provisions.
The “society” as a whole can only ABIDE by a Constitution – that’s what makes it a Constitution in both the historical and political sense.
In the U S, following the beginning of the “Progressive” Movement, initiated in the T.R. period, and advanced in the era of Wilson, the apparent material value to the general public of so abiding began to diminish abidance substantialy, and as noted by others here from 1930’s on the Constitution has fallen into utter disregard except as a political tool.
Thus I suggested it’s further use ( by adding on) to offset part of the political malignancy of continuous “permanent” legislation. It won’t happen of course.
But, tragically, the Re Publica really don’t care.
That probably should have been:
Res Publica – time rusts all neurons.
The article Liberalism, Properly So Called by Albert Nock, 1933 seems to rely on Herbert Spencer’s 1884 article The Sins of Legislators.
So the idea that politicians can reliably predict the outcome of their manipulating laws has been a fallacy for many years.
–GJ–
Actually (contrary to the above) I think enforcing a Constitution like that of the United States would be fairly easy.
What one would have to do would be to go for a system of judgement by jury – not judges.
What would a jury do when faced with a claim that such and such a statute was unconstitutional?
They could “not care” (just avoid the issue) because they had been picked to be the jury on that case – they could not just switch stations and watch the sport.
The jury would read the bit of the statute the complaint was about and read the bit of the Constiturion the complainer was pointing to.
And they would hear the arguments on both sides – about the words and (possibly) the intentions of those who wrote the words.
In short exactly the sort of “primitive approach to the Constitution” that has been sneered at by the academic establishment for more than a century.
Of course ordinary people can be corrupt – but it takes years of “Progressive” legal training to turn the U.S. Constitution on its head as has been done.
Yes I would rather trust the Constitution to even a jury randomlly elected from a street gang (who would have to struggle even to read its simple langauge) than I would to the products of the Law Schools.
And, please note, the former are poorer (not richer) than the latter – so it is not a question of “skin in the game”.
A tramp taken from the street would (as a default) just do the job right – i.e. in the “primitive and crude” way.