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Neema Parvini
The Defenders
of Liberty
Human Nature,
Individualism, and
Property Rights
The Defenders of Liberty
“Neema Parvini’s The Defenders of Liberty is a must-read for anyone with an

interest in grasping the idea of liberty—what liberty is, and why it is impor-
tant—and that should be just about everybody. Although this is a serious book
on a serious topic, it is no dry-as-dust disquisition but a lively, learned and
entertaining treatment of its subject. The book’s final chapter—‘What Went
Wrong and What Is to be Done?’—is worth the price of admission all by itself.
It had me laughing and cheering, sometimes both at the same time!”
—Gerard Casey, Professor Emeritus, University College Dublin
“This is an outstanding work of intellectual history and an important work for

anyone interested in the intellectual history of classical liberalism. Dr Parvini
tells the story of both the ideas of liberalism and its major exponents and the
movements they led in a narrative that is both informative and entertaining.
This will be valuable for both friends and critics of the ideas and will correct
many of the misrepresentations and misunderstandings that have been current
recently. Combining scholarship and dispassionate judgment with commitment
this is an important work.”
—Stephen Davies, Head of Education, Institute of Economic Affairs
“Parvini blazes new paths, both in Austrian economics and in libertarian theory.
Read this book for edification in both these important disciplines.”
—Walter E. Block, Ph.D., Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair
and Professor of Economics, Loyola University New Orleans, USA
“The Defenders of Liberty is a major contribution to the history of libertarian

thought. Parvini grasps the power of libertarian thought in a way few can match,
and everyone interested in political theory will benefit from the book.”
—David Gordon, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute
Neema Parvini
The Defenders
of Liberty
Human Nature, Individualism,
and Property Rights
Neema Parvini
School of Literature and Languages
University of Surrey
Guildford, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-39451-6 ISBN 978-3-030-39452-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39452-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rachel Sangster and her team at Palgrave Macmillan;
Stephen W. Carson for all his help, terrific eye for detail; the Mises
Institute, especially for a wonderful week in the summer of 2018;
Jonathan Fortier, for connecting me with the right places at a crucial time
in this book’s genesis; Nigel Ashford and the Institute of Humane Studies,
as well as the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, for their
generosity in helping to fund the many purchases that were necessary in
the writing of this study; Jamie Whyte and the Institute of Economic
Affairs for inviting me to all their wonderful VIP events; Jo Ann Cavallo,
a brilliant Machiavelli scholar and libertarian; Larry Arnhart, for all his
helpful comments; Stephen Davies; David Gordon; Peter Klein; Walter
Block; Joseph T. Salerno; Patrick Newman; and Chris Calton. I’d also like
to thank my parents for their love and kindness. And my wife, Sarah,
who has had to put up with me talking nearly non-stop about economics
for two years, has my eternal gratitude and love.
v
Introductory Note
The Defenders of Liberty is an exploration of over 500 years of writing and think-
ing about freedom. This is not a standard history of liberal thought,1 but rather
a book-length attempt to reconcile three distinct ideas which run through the
liberal tradition: human nature, individualism, and property rights. This is not,
strictly speaking, a political book, but rather one that spends most of its pages
discussing economic theory or else the jurisprudence of private property. I have
practically nothing to say about political system—that is, the question of mon-
archy, or democracy, or republic—because it will be one of the contentions of
this book that the extent of an individual’s liberty is a question of property rights
rather than what type of government they happen to live under. Neither will I
have much to say about the precisely optimal size of the state or indeed whether
there should be one at all. I will give no policy proposals. One of my primary
aims is to come to a view of freedom that is totally realist.2 Utopianism can be
prone to the nirvana fallacy, as per Voltaire’s aphorism: ‘the perfect is the enemy
of the good.’ This is not to say that we must speak only of what is, and not of
what ought to be, but rather that every aspect of a given ideal must be demon-
strably achievable. Since the publication of E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis in 1975,3 there has been a great flourishing of research in two related
fields: evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics. We know more
about how human beings function and think now than at any time in history.
This book strives to reconcile what we know about humans—that we are prone
to heuristics and intuitive or emotional thinking rather than reason—with
thinkers in the liberal tradition who have so often been accused of assuming the
vii
viii Introductory Note
purely rationalistic homo economicus. My approach is not to summarise the work

of the thinkers that I will cover, but rather it is critically to evaluate their argu-
ments, draw out what is worth keeping, and point out where necessary what
they got wrong. It is another aim of this book to move beyond allegiances—to
any thinker, approach, or school of thought in the liberal tradition—to a pursuit
of the truth. Allegiance should not stop us pointing out errors and refining
theory. It is entirely possible, of course, that a thinker or school might be correct
on all issues, but this finding would be quite by accident.
I will start earlier than standard accounts, with a thinker who is not
typically thought of as a liberal, Niccolò Machiavelli. This is for two rea-
sons: first, because his rigorous analysis of the machinations of politics
represents the birth of methodological individualism in modern thought.
Second is because the thinkers who wrote under his influence—namely,
the Italian school of elitism, as embodied in Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo
Pareto and, later, James Burnham—present genuine realist challenges to
liberalism, which are observable in the present, or indeed at any time.
Chapter 2 will thus focus on Machiavelli and the challenge of the elite
theorists.
Chapter 3 will move forward to the more familiar starting point for
the discussion of liberalism in the seventeenth century: the often-juxta-
posed conclusions of Hobbes and Locke, which my discussion will hope
to complicate in its consideration of their contributions to the concepts
of human nature, individualism, and property rights. Chapter 4 enters
the eighteenth century and considers the contributions of the first mod-
ern economists: Richard Cantillon, A.R.J. Turgot, David Hume, and
Adam Smith.
Chapter 5 moves forward to the nineteenth century to consider a piv-
otal episode in British economic history: the Repeal of the Corn Laws
and with it the thinkers who ushered in and wrote at the height of laissez-
faire—Nassau William Senior and Richard Cobden. It will also outline
some of the errors of the classical economists by considering David
Ricardo’s interventions in the Corn Law debate. The chapter closes by
giving some space to the contributions of Herbert Spencer and the French
classical economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, and his frequently misunderstood
Law of Markets.
Introductory Note ix
Chapter 6 will focus on the Austrian School of Economics noting the

contributions of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von
Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray N. Rothbard. Chapter 7 will draw an
outline of the little-discussed London School of Economics, which had a
strong free market tradition starting with William Stanley Jevons, Edwin
Cannan, and Philip Wicksteed, through Lionel Robbins, and exported to
the University of Cape Town by W.H. Hutt (and G.F. Thirlby). Chapter
8 will focus on ‘what has gone wrong’ with liberalism and will form a
brief conclusion.
Notes
1. For an excellent one, I’d recommend Gerard Casey, Freedom’s Progress: A
History of Political Thought (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2017).
2. See on realist versus utopian visions Neema Parvini, ‘The Constrained
Vision of Evolutionary Ethics’, in Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 35–70. See also Thomas Sowell, A
Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, rev. ed. (1987;
New York: Basic Books, 2007).
3. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975; Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Contents
1 Liberty, Human Nature, Individualism, and Property Rights 1

The Importance of Definitions 1
Liberty 3
Human Nature 9
Individualism 14
Property Rights 23
2 The Machiavellians 51
Machiavelli’s Liberty 51
Machiavelli’s Legacy 59
3 Hobbes and Locke on Human Nature; Locke on Property

Rights 77
Hobbes and Locke on Human Nature 78
Locke on Property Rights 88
4 The Enlightenment105
Richard Cantillon and the Birth of Modern Economics 106
A.R.J. Turgot on Subjective Value, Diminishing Returns, and
Capital and Interest Theory 112
xi
xii Contents
Splitting Hairs Between Hume and Locke on Justice and

Property Rights 119
Adam Smith and the Division of Labour 126
5 The Nineteenth Century139

The Repeal of the Corn Laws 141
Herbert Spencer 158
Jean-Baptiste Say and the Law of Markets 162
6 The Austrian School175

Carl Menger 180
Eugen Böhm-Bawerk 187
Ludwig von Mises 192
F.A. Hayek 204
Murray N. Rothbard 211
7 The London School225

William Stanley Jevons 226
Edwin Cannan 230
Philip Wicksteed 234
Lionel Robbins 238
W.H. Hutt 243
8 What Went Wrong and What Is to Be Done?251

Positivism, Scientism, and Mathematical Modelling 253
Monetary Policy and Central Banking 259
Decoupling Economic Liberalism from Social and Political
Liberalism 262
Selfishness, Atomisation, and Being Part of Something Bigger
than Yourself 266
Controlling the Frame and Winning the Language Game 269
Bibliography283
Index307
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Total number of offences in England and Wales from 1901 to
the end of the twentieth century 162
Fig. 6.1 Government consumption as a percentage of GDP 177
Fig. 6.2 Net national saving as a percentage of GDP 178
Fig. 6.3 The preference scale of a single individual 182
Fig. 6.4 Hayekian triangle 205
Fig. 6.5 Investments causing permanent changes to the structure of
production207
Fig. 6.6 Keynesian plan enacted on Hayek’s model 208
xiii
List of Tables
Table 1.1 The relationship between power and liberty 9

Table 1.2 Different positions within the broad church of liberalism 38
Table 3.1 Three distinct stages of Locke’s state of nature 89
Table 4.1 Locke and Hume’s conclusion 126
Table 5.1 Decade average price of bread versus average wages for
nineteenth century 142
Table 5.2 Decade average per-acre revenues and profits from 1810
to 1859 148
Table 6.1 Decade-average statistics for the UK economy from the
1840s to the present day 176
Table 6.2 Menger’s theory of exchange and a theory of prices 184
Table 6.3 Coca-Cola sales records 186
Table 6.4 Böhm-Bawerk’s positive theory of capital 189
Table 6.5 Footfall and average spend per person 210
Table 6.6 Comparison of British consumer prices from 1973
compared with prices from 2019 213
Table 8.1 Examples of linguistic inversion 273
Table 8.2 Cost in average wages measured in time to produce one
hour of light 275
xv
1
Liberty, Human Nature, Individualism,
and Property Rights
The Importance of Definitions

I write this book at a time when many have been proclaiming the immi-
nent death of liberalism.1 Critics from the radical left and conservative
right have argued that Western liberalism is failing. These writers are cer-
tainly correct that something is failing. However, it is not liberalism but
social democracy—a movement led by the enemies of liberty that hijacked
the term ‘liberalism’ at the turn of the twentieth century2—that is cur-
rently in crisis. We have seen the ‘coming slavery’ of which Herbert
Spencer warned us in 1884,3 which is why we are currently witnessing a
clash between the people and ensconced Bismarckian elites too full of
their own hubris to make sense of what might be ailing the plebeians. The
collapse of the centre-left vote across Europe should be a strong signal
that it is not the free market or the fundamental concepts of individual
liberty or property rights that have caused such agitation.4 Rather, we are
witnessing a revolt against an overbearing and overwhelmingly techno-
cratic regulatory framework that attempts to manage the global economy
through central banks and a financial system marked by its extraordinary
fragility.5 In such a climate, this book aims to reconnect readers with a
© The Author(s) 2020 1

N. Parvini, The Defenders of Liberty, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39452-3_1
2 N. Parvini
sense of what liberty really means by tracing the history of the concept in
the West from the early 1500s to the present day. In so doing, I aim to
define what freedom is, and what it is not. When I use the term ‘liberal-
ism’, I mean it, as Milton Friedman did, ‘in its original meaning’.6 The
central thesis of this book is that liberty, as it has emerged through centu-
ries of political economy, must be founded on three core pillars: human
nature, individualism, and property rights.
The enemies of liberty do not deal in clear definitions or rational argu-
mentation. Instead they deal in obfuscation, doublespeak, and smears;
they twist originally accepted definitions beyond recognition; in George
Orwell’s terms they deal solely in Newspeak.7 The enemies of liberty are
the cheerleaders of state control. They are nearly always intellectuals for
whom market demand is perennially low. The market is an intrinsically
bottom-up phenomenon which no one planned or designed; the intel-
lectuals in their hubris fancy they might be able to do better through
their allegedly superior insight. They imagine the economy to be an engi-
neering problem or a puzzle to be solved from the top down. They imag-
ine they can foresee and therefore plan better outcomes for millions of
people on their behalf; after all, they are intellectuals, so it stands to rea-
son that they must know better. Peter Saunders summed it up best:
Nobody planned the global capitalist system, nobody runs it, and nobody
really comprehends it. This particularly offends intellectuals, for capitalism
renders them redundant. It gets on perfectly well without them. It does not
need them to make it run, to coordinate it, or to redesign it. The intellec-
tual critics of capitalism believe they know what is good for us, but millions
of people interacting in the marketplace keep rebuffing them.8
Intellectuals have some options artificially to increase their market value.

They can gain employment, prestige, and power for themselves as apolo-
gists for the current regime; they can present themselves as ostensibly
vocal critics of the current regime who end up nonetheless advocating for
expanding its possible jurisdiction; or they can become lobbyists for spe-
cial interest groups.9 Joseph A. Schumpeter observed, ‘Intellectuals are in
fact people who wield the power of the spoken word and the written
word, and one of the touches that distinguishes them from other people
who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical

affairs.’10 Their primary talent is linguistic; they exert control in the flow
of information and the dissemination of ideas. The first battle to win is
the language game. Therefore, the rest of this chapter is devoted to defini-
tions of the terms of my title: liberty, human nature, individualism, and
property rights.
Incidentally, there is one final possible path open to intellectuals, that
of discovering and disseminating the truth, despite the possible social and
professional costs. This option is taken only by the brave: these are the
Defenders of Liberty to whom this book is dedicated. A look at the list of
the names I discuss will bear out the extent to which smear tactics have
been used by their cowardly and intellectually dishonest opponents.
Machiavelli is perhaps the most vilified philosopher of all time, his name
becoming synonymous with evil.11 Adam Smith was caricatured as a
‘bourgeois apologist’,12 when he was nothing of the kind. Herbert
Spencer, who despite being one of the greatest thinkers of his day and a
bastion of liberty, is now mostly forgotten except as a byword for ‘Social
Darwinism’.13 Ludwig von Mises, despite being one of the lone voices for
freedom in the dark period of totalitarianism that mired the mid-
twentieth century, and despite being demonstrably correct in both his
socialist calculation problem and in his theory of the business cycle, was
dismissed by many at the time as a crank.14 Ayn Rand and Murray
Rothbard were attacked as cult leaders (and not always by each other).
Thomas Sowell has even been abused on racial grounds as ‘an Uncle Tom’.
Yet all of these people and the others I discuss in these pages dared to stick
out their necks against the prevailing visions of their respective eras.
Liberty
In discussing liberty for the remainder of this book, I maintain that any
sensible definition must fulfil three criteria:
1. It must not contradict human nature.

2. It must respect the individual as opposed to a collective or group.
3. It must protect property rights.
4 N. Parvini
This may seem like a narrow definition of freedom to some, but those
people are confusing liberty with a concept that is in many respects its
opposite: power.15 An individual is said to be ‘free’ if left to his or her own
devices. Liberty is not, as Patrick J. Deneen seems to think, ‘the agent’s
ability to do whatever he likes’.16 This is a fundamental misunderstanding
of liberalism. It is a concept from Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ‘That man is
truly free who desires what he is able to perform and does what he
desires.’17 Rousseau was a Romantic utopian thinker, and this line of
thought has no place in the liberal tradition. As Isaiah Berlin puts it, in a
seminal essay, Rousseau’s definition of freedom, later adopted by John
Stuart Mill, ‘will not do’.18 Freedom is hence, as Berlin suggests in that
same essay, the absence of coercion or violence. I am free to walk down
the street so long as I do not punch you in the face, and vice versa.
Some have called this definition of liberty the ‘non-aggression princi-
ple’, which has its origin in this famous passage by John Locke:
The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every
one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but
consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm
another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. … [and] when his own
Preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to
preserve the rest of Mankind, and may not, unless it be to do Justice on an
Offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the Preservation of
the Life, the Liberty, Health, Limb, or Goods of another.19
You are free to own a property for which you can afford to pay, whether
up front or through mortgage repayments. You are free to get a job to
exchange your time and labour for money. You are free to use your money
to buy food and clothing. However, you are not entitled to a property, a
job, food, or clothing. It is not incumbent on anyone else to provide you
with those things, and strictly speaking, the failure of everyone else to
buy you a house or give you a job, food, and clothing is not at all a viola-
tion of your freedom. Naturally, should you by own efforts acquire these
things, your range of possible choices—that is, your power to act in cer-
tain ways—will increase. Assuming nothing else has changed, even
though your power has increased, in this case your liberty has remained
constant. You were as free before you had the house, the job, the food, or
the clothing, as you are now that you have acquired all of those things. To
use the terminology of Ludwig von Mises, you have substituted ‘a more
satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory’, because you desired ‘con-
ditions which suit [you] better’. Your actions aimed ‘at bringing about
this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some
uneasiness.’20
Murray N. Rothbard usefully distinguishes between ‘power over
nature’ and ‘power over man’.
It is easy to see that an individual’s power is his ability to control his envi-
ronment in order to satisfy his wants. A man with an ax has the power to
chop down a tree; a man with a factory has the power, along with other
complementary factors, to produce capital goods. A man with a gun has
the power to force an unarmed man to do his bidding, provided that the
unarmed man chooses not to resist or not to accept death at gunpoint. It
should be clear that there is a basic distinction between the two types of
power. Power over nature is the sort of power on which civilization must be
built; the record of man’s history is the record of the advance or attempted
advance of that power. Power over men, on the other hand, does not raise
the general standard of living or promote the satisfactions of all, as does
power over nature.21
The modern concept of ‘human rights’, tainted by Rousseauian thinking,

fundamentally confuses freedom and power. In fact, in many cases,
‘human rights’ violate liberty by using the ‘power over men’ embodied in
the state to coerce individuals to sacrifice their ‘power over nature’ for the
benefit of others. As Paul L. Poirot puts it in 1962, ‘human rights’ are
more properly defined as ‘special privileges conferred upon some persons
at the expense of others’.22
In the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses,23 as
Mises noted, there are only two methods: trade and force.24 Despite the
claims of countless despots and politicians, there is no ‘third way’. If indi-
viduals are not to take resources from others by coercive means, then they
must acquire them through trade.25 Let us return to the passage by Locke
above and focus on his call that individuals ‘ought … as much as [they]
6 N. Parvini
can, to preserve the rest of Mankind’. It is possible that Locke was simply
repeating the conventional Christian call for charity for the needy and
unfortunate. However, there is a second sense in which we may interpret
this phrase: that individuals may dedicate themselves to ‘preserving the
rest of mankind’ by producing things that their neighbours want and
offering them for provision in exchange for money. Since individuals will
only trade their own resources for things they want, the producer of con-
sumer goods must, by definition, be satisfying some need or else their
business would not sustain itself. This is the central insight of Adam
Smith: ‘In the absence of coercion, [individuals] can realise [their] self-
interest only in serving the interests of others; so in helping themselves,
they help others too.’26 This is a positive-sum game in which all partici-
pants gain.
Naturally, some individuals in this system of trade will have greater
resources and therefore greater purchasing power than others. Assuming
the total absence of coercion, this can only be because they have provided
more things that people want when compared with others or that they
have inherited the wealth from a relative who did. The inheritor of wealth
who ceases to provide things that people want will see their resources
dwindle over time. Because it is both proportional and reciprocal, trade
is the fairest system of allocation.27 However, as Niccolò Machiavelli
noted in 1517, ‘human appetites are insatiable’.28 People tend to want
more than there is, and so the system of prices that underpins market
exchange is ultimately a form of rationing. Allocating resources in some
way other than trade does not resolve the need for rationing: ‘there would
be the same scarcity under feudalism or socialism or in a tribal society.’29
Since the only other method of allocation is force, what happens in those
societies is that some people gain at the expense of others. When you
replace market mechanisms with central command and control planning,
every decision becomes a zero-sum game.
Since government properly defined constitutes a monopoly of violence
its scope for oppression is great. Politics is force by another name. As
Mises said, ‘it is the characteristic mark of state and government that they
apply violent coercion or the threat of it against those not prepared to
yield voluntarily.’30 It stands to reason, therefore, that the defender of
liberty should seek, in Rothbard’s phrase, ‘the separation of government
from virtually everything’.31 Since the precondition of liberty is the estab-

lishment of rule of law—that is, a mechanism to ensure that violations of
the non-aggression principle are properly punished—thinkers in the lib-
eral tradition have been split for over two centuries on what the precise
limits of governance should be. Broadly, there have been three positions:
1. ‘the social safety net’, in which in addition to the functions of the

‘night-watchman state’ detailed below, and assuming it can afford it,
the state administers necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter to
the poorest individuals and/or maintains some public infrastructure
such as roads;
2. ‘the night-watchman state’, or ‘minarchist’ view, in which the state
provides the basic law and order functions of the courts, the police,
and the military; and
3. ‘anarcho-capitalism’, in which the state has been abolished and all
functions are handled by private enterprise on the free market.
Each of these three positions confronts some major obstacles and chal-
lenges. For those who accept the social safety net, the immediate question
is to how and why the line is drawn. Since there is no moral objection to
a safety net, then why not indulge in welfarism beyond this? Arguments
from utility or efficiency (the stance mostly adopted by Milton Friedman)
or even practicality (this is ultimately F.A. Hayek’s view vis-à-vis the
knowledge problem) do not preclude the theoretical possibility that more
concessions to welfarism might be made.
Those who maintain the minarchist position must grapple with the
conundrum of how to stop the state from growing beyond their desired
limit. This is not a problem of political system, since the issue persists
under aristocracy, absolute monarchy, or democracy. This is because, no
matter the system, as Friedman puts it, ‘political power by its nature tends
to be concentrated’.32 That a given leader has the backing of most people
does not necessarily serve as a check on their power. As Wordsworth
Donisthorpe of The Liberty and Property Defense League observed
in 1891:
8 N. Parvini
We may agree with John Locke that there ought to be some limit to despo-
tism, and we may keep on shifting the concentrated force from the hands
of the One to those of the Few; from the hands of the Few to those of the
Many; and from the hands of the Many to those of the Most—the numeri-
cal majority. But this handing of power cannot alter its nature; it still
remains unlimited despotism, as Hobbes rightly assumes.33
Lord Acton puts it more pithily: ‘Absolute power and restrictions on its
exercise cannot exist together. … Democracy tends to the unity of power.’
Acton’s own solution was a ‘restricted federalism’; however, it is worth
noting that he supported the American secessionists in the Civil War and
wrote of being ‘broken hearted’ at Robert E. Lee’s defeat. Acton seemed
to envision a system of smaller micro-nations under an umbrella macro-
state, perhaps somewhat similar to the current European Union, albeit
one would imagine without the Kafka-esque regulatory framework.34
Those who defend the anarcho-capitalist position, meanwhile, face
some altogether different challenges. First, in convincing others even to
conceive of an ordered society without a state—which is beyond the
imagination of the vast majority of people. Second, in convincing others
that life in the stateless free society would be preferable to the current
situation under the state. Third, assuming their desired arrangements
could come about, anarcho-capitalists must explain what safeguards there
might be against new states inevitably forming, since it is not obvious or
guaranteed that they would not. And then we are back to square one.
The inextricable logic of power is that it has an incentive to grow at the
expense of liberty. There is a paradox: power is the prerequisite and guar-
antor of the rule of law on which the system of liberty depends, and yet
power and liberty have a directly inverse correlative relationship. Let us
imagine respective ratings out of ten for power and liberty, where a ten
out of ten rating is full totalitarian state control, and one is life under
anarcho-capitalism35; the relationship between power and liberty thus
follows this general pattern (Table 1.1).
We must accept a modicum of power or there is no liberty, but how
can we halt its will to grow? This central puzzle has preoccupied most of
the thinkers I discuss in this book.
Table 1.1 The relationship between power and liberty

Power Liberty
0 0
1 10
2 9
3 8
4 7
5 6
6 5
7 4
8 3
9 2
10 1
Human Nature
While human nature is complex, it is not unknowable. Indeed, there are
many things that we know about it. Humans are social creatures, marked
by an ability to communicate and cooperate with each other in a way that
distinguishes us from most other mammals. We have the capacity to feel
compassion for the suffering of others. However, unlike ants or bees, we
are not able to eliminate individual self-interest to become entirely altru-
istic.36 Also, our sociability does not extend to all of humanity, but rather
to specific groups. Humans are tribal. Even since the development of the
nation state, and beyond that globalism, most people consistently show
strong revealed preferences for the in-group as compared with out-groups.
These groups demand loyalty and respect for authority. They also demand
a proportional fairness that will not tolerate free riders. Individuals within
such groups are acutely aware of hierarchical status. We are also prone to
competition both between groups and between individuals, and such
competition can and often has become violent throughout history.37
Humans are industrious in mixing the soil with their labour to pro-
duce consumer goods and entrepreneurial in finding new ways to do so.38
But we are not only creatures of work; we show a strong preference for
leisure and entertainment and a deep desire to experience beauty. Partly
to fulfil this demand, and partly to foster greater social cohesion in tight-
ening the moral foundations that bind us, we produce art and tell stories,
10 N. Parvini
not only about the past, but also about fictional events.39 We typically
enjoy admiring art, taking in entertainments, or even just relaxing, thus
leisure is desirable. Labour, meanwhile, is not always desirable and yet it
is a permanent feature of human life in all known history; without it the
species would die out. Given this proclivity for both labour and leisure,
individuals thus must choose how much time to allocate to each. In order
to devote time to labour for the accumulation of consumer goods neces-
sary for survival, individuals must forego leisure.40 This is an inescapable
fact of life.
The utopia of superabundance cannot come about, because even if we
had every worldly good at our disposal in unlimited supply—and if we
can imagine a world in which we no longer need to have haircuts, take
transport, or use any other service—our days are still rationed by minutes
and hours. Post-scarcity can never happen because time is always a scarce
resource. Furthermore, leisure is subject to the law of diminishing mar-
ginal utility,41 and eventually enjoyment will diminish to the point where
the boredom and inertia of idleness would result in a desire to reallocate
one’s resources to more productive ends. This is a phenomenon that psy-
chologists have called ‘idleness aversion’.42 It perhaps explains the persis-
tence of Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia, which has been variously
reinvented as ‘the calling’ in the theology of John Calvin—later dubbed
‘the Protestant work ethic’ by Max Weber—and ‘self-actualisation’ in
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.43 Ayn Rand built her entire philosophy on
this concept.44 It has also long supported a massive self-help industry.
Humans near automatically sort, categorise, label, and rank everything
they observe. There is a natural tendency, then, for taxonomy: classifica-
tion is a permanent feature of the way we see the world universal to all
known cultures.45 But such classifications are seldom neutral and most
often hierarchical. Individuals are not all created equal in respects to their
physical attributes or their talents. We have differential traits in terms of
height, weight, speed, strength, intelligence, and attractiveness. Some
capabilities might be developed through training, but every individual
operates against hard genetic limits on their full potential. I might very
well train to sprint faster than I can right now, but it is likely impossible
for me to compete at the Olympics.46
The human propensity for classification and the diversity of individual

talents combine to produce specialisation and the division of labour.
Individuals are at their most useful to their fellow humans if they focus
their efforts on those areas at which they are most productive. If Peter has
a talent for baking bread and Paul for chopping meat, the whole society
is better served if Peter specialises as a baker and Paul as a butcher. More
bread and meat are produced than if Peter and Paul both divided their
time between baking bread and chopping meat. In fact, as per Ricardo’s
Law of Association, this even remains true if Peter is better than Paul at
both baking bread and chopping meat.47
Egalitarianism—that is, the belief that the differential outcomes pro-
duced by these various attributes might somehow be equalised—can be
explained in one of three ways. First, at the most basic emotional level, it
is the misapplication of compassion. Second, at the level of critical analy-
sis, it is a simple confusion about cause and effect. Third, at the more
sinister ideological level, it is an attempt to impose a fundamentally
unachievable utopian vision onto reality.48
Humans are capable of reason, and yet most of our thinking is intui-
tive and emotional, prone to systematic confirmation biases and various
other heuristics. Empirical data have proven David Hume right that rea-
son is ‘the slave of the passions’.49 The vast majority of reasoning turns out
to be post-hoc justification for decisions already made by instinctual
intuition. Furthermore, our relative blindness to these heuristics leads to
a systematic overrating of our capabilities, our contributions to projects,
our capacity to assess risk, and our ability to predict the future.50 Humans
are thus guilty of endemic hubris, which likely explains why the tale of
Icarus who flew too close to the sun was codified into a narrative by
ancient wisdom.51 Nonetheless, humans are capable of the deeper cogni-
tive process that we call reason. Reason is not the norm for humanity, but
it is humanity at its best.
Allied to this is the fact that humans are agents in the world who have
a capacity to think and therefore to make decisions and to act. Every
action entails a choice. Individuals must constantly weigh up alternatives
and choose. We can call this capacity for choosing and acting in the
absence of coercion, liberty. Every individual has different preference
scales for every decision they make. Such scales are ordinal not cardinal.
12 N. Parvini
We cannot know what drives any other person to make the decision they
did, but we can observe their revealed preference in the action that
they took.52
Nonetheless, there are certain enduring propensities we can observe in
human decisions when self-interest and reason are combined. If Bob is
selling a book, which in his mind is worth $5, and he receives offers of
$10 from Alice and one of $100 from Mike then which offer does he
take? Humans will have a strong tendency to take the higher offer. If Bob
were a purely altruistic and irrational being, he would tell both Alice and
Mike that the book is only worth $5 and in the strict interest of fairness
he will only take $5 for it. However, there is only one book, so how can
he decide to sell it to Alice or to Mike? If he sells the book to Alice, in her
mind she has got it for cheap, and perhaps Mike—who wanted the book
a lot more—might be outraged and harbour a grudge against both Bob
and Alice. In trying to be fair, Bob has made the situation much worse
than it might have been. It stands to reason, then, that the fairest action
here is for Bob to sell the book to Mike for $100. Both are happy, and
Alice can be safe in the knowledge that someone paid ten times over her
calculated odds for the book. In the final analysis, self-interest and reason
produce a fairer and more favourable outcome for all than an irrational
attempt to be ‘fair’ driven by misplaced altruism.
Finally, an often-overlooked aspect of human nature is time prefer-
ence. We must make decisions and act in time, and so the element of
time factors into all our judgements. Just as most people will take the
higher offer above the lower one when selling an item, when given a
choice between $100 now and $100 in one week’s time, most will take
the money today. Present goods therefore have a higher value than future
goods, partly because we want it now, and partly because of the element
of risk. However, if the choice is between $100 today and $1000 in one
month’s time, the decision is more difficult. Some will take the money
now (high-time preference) and some will have the foresight to delay
consumption for the promise of a higher reward in a month (low-time
preference). However, in so doing, they take a risk since any number of
things could happen in a month.53 Most people are both risk averse and
loss averse, but to make profits an individual must speculate about the
future, delay their own consumption, and take a risk on the prospect of
future returns.54 Planning for the future thus always entails judgement
under uncertainty; there is no such thing as a sure bet.55 As Machiavelli
famously puts it, fortune is like ‘one of these violent rivers which, when
they become enraged, flood the plains, ruin the trees and the buildings,
lift earth from this part, drop in another’.56 We can take every precaution,
make every contingency plan, but we can never eliminate uncertainty or
risk. Just as individuals are unequal in other respects, so they have differ-
ent propensities for risk-taking.57
In these short few passages, I have summarised established facts about
human beings to which no serious scholar who respects reason, evidence,
or observable history would deny. The question for us is the extent to
which the vision of liberty that I am seeking to uphold in this book is
commensurate with these established facts. This question shall remain in
focus in my discussion of the thinkers in the following chapters. Even
here at the outset, there are several potential stumbling blocks. I will
touch on just two.
First, it has been established that humans are naturally tribal, and this,
at face value, seems to jar with the phrase ‘individualism’, I will return to
this question in my definition of the term below. But, for now, it will suf-
fice to say that the apparent contradiction between ‘tribal’ and ‘individu-
alist’ is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by the second
term. ‘Individualism’ does not refer to an atomistic individualism which
assumes that humans cannot cooperate and are only for themselves,
purely selfish creatures, it refers rather to ‘methodological individualism’
which maintains that the individual must be the smallest unit of analysis.
It also maintains that only individuals can make decisions and act; collec-
tives are not and can never be decision-making units, they are simply
descriptions for groups of individuals.58
Second, liberalism is predicated on humans taking the most reasonable
course of action in the long run. We have seen that reason is the excep-
tion rather than the rule for human decision-making. This may be
resolved very simply by distinguishing between economic and political
decisions. In economic decisions, the individual actors need only concern
themselves with their immediate interests. The baker needs only concen-
trate on turning a profit from their bread-making activities. The pur-
chaser of the bread needs only think about satisfying their desire to eat
14 N. Parvini
bread in trading their money in exchange for it, and so on. Even the capi-
talist and entrepreneur when forecasting for their investments need only
concentrate on one market for their opportunity. In making these sorts of
decisions, individuals only need reason enough to focus on a desired end
and then on devising means to achieve it. The market coordinates their
efforts without design by a ‘master mind’.59
Political decision-making, however, whether for leaders, or for the vot-
ers in a democracy, is a whole different matter. One reason for this is
because, as politics is force by another name, it is only ever involved in
making zero-sum decisions. Resources are simply taken from place A and
relocated to place B.60 Most often this reallocation is carried out in the
form of taxation coerced from the multitude and funnelled to special
interest groups.61 The nature of such decisions, therefore, sends passions
flaring. Everyone wants to be on the winning side, and naturally, not
everyone can win. In the arena of political decision-making, therefore,
the emotional dog does indeed wag the rational tail.62 Political leaders
with an eye on their own popularity are prone to making short-term,
high-time preference decisions that have deleterious effects in the long
run.63 Likewise, voters have trouble thinking beyond their immediate
interests and often vote for bad policies or else for politicians who make
promises they cannot possibly keep.64 Here there are no solutions, only
trade-offs.65
Individualism
As we have seen definitions are important, especially because the enemies
of liberty often twist words to mean the opposite of their original defini-
tions. This is especially the case with ‘individualism’, which perhaps more
than even ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberty’ has been subject to linguistic terror-
ism. As F.A. Hayek complained:
[T]he same term often means nearly the opposite to different groups. …
No political term has suffered worse in this respect than ‘individualism’. It
has not only been distorted by its opponents into an unrecognizable cari-
cature—and we should always remember that the political concepts which
are today out of fashion are known to most of our contemporaries only
through the picture of them drawn by our enemies—but has been used to
describe several attitudes toward society which have as little in common
among themselves as they have traditionally regarded as their opposites.66
Hayek distinguishes between ‘true’ and ‘false’ individualism. For Hayek,

‘the fundamental attitude of true individualism is one of humility toward
the processes by which mankind has achieved things which would not
have been designed or understood by any individual and are indeed
greater than individual minds.’ This is the spontaneous order tradition of
Smith, Burke, and Hume. The false individualism meanwhile is that
derived from the Cartesian rationalism of Rousseau, which has a more
hubristic, unconstrained, and utopian vision of what human beings can
know and achieve by design. We are back with the philosopher kings of
Plato’s republic. Hayek argues this second, ‘false’ form of individualism is
actually collectivism in disguise and will lead ‘directly to socialism’.67 I
have discussed much of this already in the prior section on ‘Human
Nature’, but suffice it to say that just as with the Rousseauian concept of
liberty, the version of ‘individualism’ that spawned from that intellectual
line has no place in the liberal tradition. Neither is individualism what
Patrick J. Deneen seems to think a form of libertinism or hedonism.68
To clarify the definition of individualism that will serve for the remain-
der of this book, let us look at one of the most wilfully misunderstood
passages of the late twentieth century in Britain, namely Margaret
Thatcher’s statement in an interview in Women’s Own magazine:
[T]hey are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no
such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families
and no government can do anything except through people and people
look to themselves first. … There is no such thing as society.69
It is obvious from this that Thatcher did not literally mean ‘there is no
such thing as society’, she was talking figuratively. What she meant was
that ‘society’ is not a decision-making unit. The only agents that can
think and act are individuals. ‘Society’ is a merely descriptive term, it
refers to a group of individuals living in a time and place, but it has no
16 N. Parvini
mind of its own. As Ludwig von Mises puts it, ‘Society neither thinks nor
acts. Individuals in thinking and acting constitute a complex of relations
and facts that are called social relations and facts.’70 This is the key insight
of what is typically meant by ‘individualism’: when analysing human
affairs, the individual should and must be the smallest unit, groups and
collectives cannot act except through the separate wills of individuals.
However, Thatcher makes a second claim in the same interview:
It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our
neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitle-
ments too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such
thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation.71
This is a restatement of John Locke’s ‘when [their] own Preservation

comes not in competition’, individuals ‘ought … as much as [they] can,
to preserve the rest of Mankind’, as quoted above. By stressing reciprocity,
Thatcher emphasises trade as the bedrock of cooperation between indi-
viduals. This is nearly identical to how Mises defines methodological
individualism in Human Action (1949):
First we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals. A collec-
tive operates always through the intermediary of one or several individuals
whose actions are related to the collective as the secondary source. … For a
social collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual mem-
bers’ actions. The life of a collective is lived in the actions of the individuals
constituting its body.72
And later: ‘Society is concerted action, cooperation. … The individual

lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination
of individuals for cooperative effort.’73 When Mises says, ‘cooperative
effort’, he means, just as Thatcher did, the mutual reciprocal benefit
brought about by trade through the division of labour.
And it is precisely on the understanding of this idea of cooperation
through the reciprocal trading arrangements brought about by the divi-
sion of labour that the enemies of liberty become so confused in their
mangling of ‘individualism’. This largely owes to two factors. The first,
and there is no kind way to say this, is that they do not read the key mate-
rials written by the defenders of liberty carefully. Attempts to discuss lib-
eralism by its enemies frequently result in the painful exposure of their
unfamiliarity with the tradition. As Hayek noted in my earlier quotation,
too often they rest on caricature and strawmen rather than direct engage-
ment. Hence, in one particularly egregious example, we are told without
a hint of awareness that Russell Kirk—a staunch and romantic conserva-
tive, who was still lamenting the repeal of the Corn Laws in 195374—was,
in fact, a classical liberal! The author quickly footnotes that the terms
‘classical liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are ‘largely interchangeable’.75 It is a
shame that nobody ever told Kirk himself this, he would have saved him-
self a lot of ink.
The second reason for confusion, and again there is no kind way to say
it, is the near total ignorance of economics among the enemies of liberty.
To illustrate this point, and so as not to deal with strawmen myself, let us
turn to an anti-liberty thinker who was much more robust than most in
his critique of individualism, C.B. Macpherson. There is much to admire
in the clarity of the exposition in his classic study, The Political Theory of
Possessive Individualism, but perhaps it will be instructive to pinpoint
exactly where he goes wrong in his otherwise lucid account. He posits
that a functional possessive market society requires the following
postulates:
1. There is no authoritative allocation of work.

2. There is no authoritative provision of rewards for work.
3. There is authoritative definition and enforcement of contracts.
4. All individuals seek rationally to maximise their utilities.
5. Each individual’s capacity to labour is his own property and is
alienable.
6. Land and resources are owned by individuals and are alienable.
7. Some individuals want a higher level of utilities or power than
they have.
8. Some individuals have more energy, skill, or possessions, than others.76
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MISS COTTRELL'S ELATION
UNCLE REDMAYNE adhered to his resolve, and took Agneta back to

Manchester on the following afternoon. Mother would gladly have kept her for
a few days; but he seemed to feel that she was safe only in his custody. She
looked very miserable as she bade us good-bye. I could not help feeling sorry
for her although she had caused me to suffer so much. My heart grew cold
and heavy within me whenever I thought of the look I had seen on Alan
Faulkner's face as he glanced at me across the platform at Liverpool Street. It
is hard to be misunderstood, and to lose, through no fault of your own, the
good opinion of one on whose friendship you set a high value.
Mother had discovered that I was not looking so well as when I was last at
home, and she insisted on my remaining with her for a week.
"I am sure that your Aunt Patty will not mind," she said; "I have written to
explain it all to her, and she will hear too from your uncle. You need not be
afraid that she will misjudge you, Nan."
"Oh, I am not afraid of Aunt Patty," I said. "She will understand. It is what Mrs.
Canfield and other people will think that makes me uneasy."
"Oh, your aunt will be able to explain the matter to Mrs. Canfield, and to make
it right with other people too, I dare say," mother said soothingly; "and, if not,
what does it matter? You acted for the best; you did nothing wrong. Your uncle
said he was very grateful to you for what you had done."
"But I did nothing," was my reply. "After all, I might as well have stayed at the
garden party, for uncle was on the platform when the train came in. He would
have stopped Agneta without my being there."
I spoke with some bitterness, for it seemed to me that I had made a fruitless
sacrifice of what was very precious. I could not believe that aunt would be
able to make everything right, nor could I persuade myself that it did not
matter.
"I am sure that your uncle was glad that you were with her," mother said.
"Don't worry about it, Nan. It is cowardly to mind what people may say about
us, if our conscience tells us we have done right. I would not have a girl
reckless as to the opinion others may form of her, but it is a mistake to let
ourselves be unduly influenced by a fear of misjudgment."
I knew that mother's words were true, but it was not of "people" that I was
thinking. It was good to be with mother again. I enjoyed the days at home, yet
my mind dwelt much at "Gay Bowers," and I found myself looking forward to
my return with mingled longing and dread.
To my great satisfaction it was arranged that father should take me back and
stay over Sunday at "Gay Bowers." Aunt could give him Mr. Dicks's room, as
that gentleman had gone with his daughter to the seaside for a fortnight. At
the expiration of that time Paulina hoped once more to take up her abode at
"Gay Bowers."
In spite of all misgivings, I felt wonderfully lighthearted when father and I

reached Chelmsford late in the afternoon. His presence was a great support
to me. If Alan Faulkner doubted me, he could not fail to see that father and I
were on the best of terms. I knew that he liked father, and I looked forward to
hearing them talk together.
As the train entered the station I caught sight of the wagonette waiting
outside. Had any one come to meet us? As I stepped on to the platform I
looked about me at once eagerly and timidly. Some one had come to meet us.
It was Miss Cottrell. My heart sank as I caught sight of her. I could have
dispensed with her society.
Miss Cottrell was looking wonderfully well. Was it the new hat and the pink
blouse she wore which made her appear younger? I could not believe that it
was simply my return which gave her face such a radiant expression. Yet she
greeted me very warmly. It was evident that she was in the best of spirits.
Even father noticed how well she looked.
"I hope you are as well as you look, Miss Cottrell," he said. "You seem to have
quite recovered from the fatigue of nursing. Yet you must have had a very
trying time."
"Oh, no, indeed!" she said briskly. "Paulina's was not a bad case, and she has
been convalescent for the past week. I really had not much to do."
"I expected to hear that you had gone with her to the seaside," I said.
"Oh, I could not do that," she said, bridling in a way I thought curious, "and
Paulina did not need me as Mr. Dicks proposed taking the nurse, though her
post is now a sinecure."
"He must feel very grateful to you for your devotion to his daughter," father
said.
"Oh, not at all; I was very glad to be of service," she said, and then, to my
amusement, she blushed like a girl and looked so oddly self-conscious that I
could have laughed.
But the next moment I did not feel at all like laughing, for she went on to say:
"We were all so glad to hear that you were coming, Mr. Darracott, for we are
such a small party now. Colonel Hyde will be obliged to you for keeping him in
countenance, for he is our only gentleman."
"Really! Why, what has become of Professor Faulkner?" asked my father,

while my heart gave a sudden bound and then seemed to stand still.
"He has gone to Edinburgh on business—something to do with a post at a

college there, I believe," said Miss Cottrell.
I seemed to turn both hot and cold as she spoke. In that brief moment of
suspense I felt that I could not possibly bear it, if he had taken his final
departure from "Gay Bowers" without saying good-bye to me.
"Then he is coming back again," father said quietly.
"Oh, yes, he is coming back some time," Miss Cottrell replied; "he has not
taken his books and things with him."
I breathed freely again; but my heart was like lead. All the pleasure of my
return was gone. I felt sick at the thought of having to wait for days, possibly
for weeks, ere I could be assured that Alan Faulkner was not hopelessly
estranged from me. I fell silent and let Miss Cottrell do all the talking as we
drove through the sweet-scented lanes on that lovely summer evening. How
differently things were turning out from what I had anticipated! At last a
shrewd, observant glance from Miss Cottrell warned me of her terrible skill in
putting two and two together, and I roused myself and made an effort to
appear happier than I was.
"Gay Bowers" looked much as usual as we drove up to the door; the roses
had come out more plentifully about the porch. Sweep had a disconsolate air
as he lay on the mat; he missed some one. I could hardly believe that it was
only a week since I rode away from the house in such desperate haste. It
might have happened a year ago, it seemed so far away. I felt like the ghost of
my old self as I forced myself to smile and talk and appear as pleased to be
there as if nothing had changed for me. What a blessing it was that Miss
Cottrell was so cheerful and her flow of small talk never ceased!
"It is good to have you back, Nan," Aunt Patty said, coming into my room
when she had shown father his. "You must not run away from me again."
"I wish I had not run away," I said ruefully; "the people who met me tearing into
Chelmsford must have thought me mad. What did Mrs. Canfield say?"
"Oh, when you did not come back we thought something must be very wrong.
I went home to see what was the matter, and when I could find neither you nor
Agneta I was uneasy enough until I got the telegram," said my aunt.
"Afterwards I thought it best to tell Mrs. Canfield, in confidence, the whole
truth, and I am afraid I did not spare Agneta. What a foolish girl! I pity her
parents! She came near ruining their happiness and her own!"
"She is greatly to be pitied, too, auntie," I said; "poor Agneta is very unhappy."
"Well, I won't be so hard-hearted as to say that she deserved to suffer," replied

Aunt Patty. "You will miss her, Nan."
I smiled at the sly significance of my aunt's words as I glanced round my

pretty room. She knew how pleased I was to see it restored to its old order
and to have it for my own sanctum once more. Yet I was very sorry that
Agneta had departed in such a way.
"Auntie," I said, after a minute, "what has come to Miss Cottrell? She seems
overjoyed to be at 'Gay Bowers' again!"
Aunt Patty laughed. "You may well ask what has happened to her," she said.
"It is not just her return to this house which is making her so joyous. I wonder
she has not told you. Miss Cottrell is engaged to be married!"
"Oh, auntie!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean it! Not to Mr. Dicks?"
"To no less a person than Josiah Dicks," replied Aunt Patty with twinkling
eyes.
I was not altogether surprised, and yet the news was sufficiently exciting. So
this was how the American would evince his gratitude for Miss Cottrell's
devotion to his daughter!
"Well, I never!" I exclaimed. "But they always got on well together. Of course
she is delighted, for he has so much money and she thinks a great deal of
wealth."
"Come, come, don't be too hard on Miss Cottrell!" my aunt replied. "Give her
credit for better feelings. In spite of her faults—and they are not very serious
ones, after all—she has a large heart, and I believe she really loves Mr.
Dicks."
"Auntie! Is it possible?" I cried. "But poor Paulina! How does she like it? It
must be a trial to her."
"On the contrary, Miss Cottrell assures me that she is quite pleased," my aunt
said.
But that statement I took with a grain of salt. I remembered Miss Cottrell's
talent for embroidering facts, and classed the pleasure she ascribed to
Paulina with her glowing descriptions of dear Lady Mowbray's' attachment to
herself.
"When will they be back?" I asked.
"The Dickses? On Wednesday week," aunt replied.
She might have known that I wanted to hear when Mr. Faulkner was expected
to return; but she never mentioned him, and something withheld me from
making a direct inquiry.
Then aunt went away, and I began to make myself tidy, feeling that the house
seemed strangely quiet and empty after the cheerful bustle of home, and
oppressed by the thought of the days before me. I had now been at 'Gay
Bowers' for about six months, and the time had passed swiftly enough, but I
looked forward with some dread to the remainder of my sojourn there.
Yet how lovely the dear old garden was looking as the sun declined! I stepped
from my window on to the top of the porch. The boxes which bordered it were
planted with mignonette, amid which some fuchsias and geraniums in pots
made a brilliant show. There was just room for me to sit in a little low chair in
the space thus enclosed, and in the warm days I often sat there to read or
sew. Alan Faulkner used to call this spot my "observatory," since from it I
could survey the front garden and see all that passed the house on the road
that descended from the common to the village. I had not stood there many
moments when I perceived Jack Upsher spinning down the hill on his bicycle.
He took off his cap and waved it gleefully as he caught sight of me. At the
gate, he alighted, and there was nothing for it but I must go down and talk to
him.
"Oh, Nan, it is jolly to see you again!" he cried as I ran out. "I am glad you've
come back, and isn't it nice that most of the others have taken themselves off?
It will seem like the good old times before the 'paying guests' came."
"Aunt Patty would hardly consider it nice if all her guests departed," I said.
"However, Miss Cottrell is with us again, and father has come down with me
to-day, so we are not quite without society."
"I know. The governor and I are coming in to see him this evening," he said;
"so then we'll have some tennis, Nan, and you shall tell me all you have been
doing since you departed in such imprudent haste without any luggage. I
heard how you rode into town on that occasion. You will please not to say
anything to me in the future on the subject of 'scorching.'"
What a boy he was! We had a sharp war of words for a few minutes, and then
he rode off, convinced that he had got the better of me. Though he did not
dare to say so, I could see that Mr. Faulkner's absence afforded him
gratification. It was very strange. I never could understand what made him
dislike the Professor so much.
I took an early opportunity of congratulating Miss Cottrell on her engagement,

and received in response such an outburst of confidence from her as was
almost overpowering. With the utmost pride she exhibited her betrothal ring,
on which shone a magnificent diamond, almost as big as a pea.
"It frightens me to think what it must have cost," she said, "yet you see he has
so much money that he hardly knows what to do with it, for he is naturally a
man of simple tastes and habits."
"So I imagine," I said, "or he would hardly have been happy so long here with
us. Paulina helps him to spend his money. He must be glad to have found
some one else on whom he may lavish gifts."
"He is very thankful that he came to 'Gay Bowers,'" she said solemnly, "and
you can't think how glad I am that we both chanced to see your aunt's
advertisement."
"It has indeed proved a happy circumstance," I said, "but I hope this will not
lead to your cutting short your stay, Miss Cottrell."
"I don't know," she said, blushing like a girl; "He wants me to—name a day in
the autumn, and then he will take me abroad. I have so often longed to go on
the Continent, and it will be so delightful to travel with him to take care of me,
you know. And of course we shall do everything in the first style, for the
expense will be nothing to him. Am I not a fortunate woman?"
"I can quite understand that you feel that," I said. "And how about Paulina—
what will she do?"
"Oh, Paulina is so good and sweet!" she said ecstatically. "Her father would
like her to go with us, but she says she would rather stay here with Mrs. Lucas
till we come back. You know I think she is rather interested in the Professor."
"Oh!" I said. "But he has gone away!"
"Only for a few weeks," said Miss Cottrell carelessly.
She went on talking, but for some moments I lost all sense of what she was
saying. A question recalled my mind to the present. Miss Cottrell was asking
me if I had ever seen a buggy.
"No," I said dreamily; "it is a kind of carriage, I believe."
"Of course," said Miss Cottrell, "that is what I told you. He says he will take me
for drives in a buggy when we go to New York. I thought you might know what
it is like. It does not sound very nice somehow."
CHAPTER XX
A PROPOSAL
"THE Dickses will be here to-morrow, Nan," Aunt Patty said to me one
morning more than a week later.
"Oh, I am glad!" I said involuntarily.

"So you have found our diminished household dull," said Aunt Patty, smiling.
"Oh, no, auntie, it is not that," I said quickly; "but I have grown very tired of
hearing Miss Cottrell talk about Mr. Dicks and dilate upon the glories and
delights that await her in the future."
Aunt Patty laughed.
"Poor Miss Cottrell!" she said. "It is rather absurd the way she plumes herself
on the prize she has won, yet I am glad she is so happy. I fancy she led a
lonely life before she came here."
"After 'dear Lady Mowbray' died," I said. "Well, I am sure I do not grudge her
her happiness, though I should like to be sure that it will not lessen Paulina's."
"I think you will find that Paulina takes it philosophically," aunt said; "she is
never one to fret or worry. I shall be glad to welcome her back. Do you know
she has been away from us for more than a month? It hardly seems so long."
"It seems a long time to me," I said, and had hardly uttered the words ere I
longed to recall them, for I did not want aunt to discover why it was that the
time had seemed so long to me. It was more than a fortnight since I had seen
Alan Faulkner, and our last talk together, when he had tried to warn me of the
unworthiness of Ralph Marshman, was a constant burden on my memory.
While the hope of arriving at a better understanding with him had to be
deferred indefinitely, the days dragged heavily. The entrance of Miss Cottrell,
evidently in the best of spirits, prevented Aunt Patty from making any
comment on my words.
There was a pleasant bustle in the house that day as we prepared for the
return of our Americans. As I helped to set Paulina's room in order, I thought
of the miserable night when I had watched beside her and she had suffered so
much and shrunk in such dread from the prospect of illness. How dark had
seemed the cloud of trouble that loomed ahead of her then! But it had passed
and the blessing of health was Paulina's once more. What had the experience
meant for Paulina? Would she be just the same as she had been before it
befell?
I could hardly keep from laughing when Miss Cottrell brought some of her
choicest carnations to adorn Mr. Dicks's room. It seemed so impossible that
any woman could cherish a romantic attachment to Josiah Dicks, and he was
so prosaic a being that I feared the flowers would be lost on him. I am afraid
middle-aged courtship will always appear ridiculous in the eyes of a girl of
nineteen.
I was putting the finishing touches to Paulina's room when I became aware of
a shrill whistle from the garden. I looked out of the window. Jack stood on the
gravel below.
"Come down, Nan, please," he shouted. "I have news—such news for you!"
He was looking so elate that I had no fear of the news being other than good.
Full of wonder, I ran downstairs.
"No, I am not coming in," he said as we shook hands; "I am going to tell you
all by yourself. You know I went up to London this morning?"
"I know nothing about it," was my reply. "You generally tell me when you are
going to town, but you did not on this occasion."
"Oh, well," he said smiling, "there was a reason for that."
"You have not been to my home?" I asked eagerly. "The news has nothing to
do with my people, has it?"
"I cannot say that it has," he answered rather blankly. "Is there no one else in
whom you can take a little interest?"
"Why, of course! Now I know, Jack!" I cried, enlightened by his manner. "You
have passed for Woolwich! That is your news."
"You are right," he said, with shining eyes; "aren't you amazed?"
"Not in the least," I replied. "It is only what I expected; but I am very glad."
"I thought that the result might be known in London this morning, so I went up
to find out," Jack explained. "I could not wait for the post to bring me the news.
Besides, I felt I'd like to be alone when I learned how it was with me. I can tell
you I trembled like a leaf when I saw the list, and when I looked for my name,
there seemed to be something wrong with my eyesight. But I found it at last
—'John Upsher'—sure enough."
"Of course I knew it would be there," I said. "Let us go and tell Aunt Patty."
"Not yet," he said, slipping his hand within my arm and drawing me away from
the house. "We'll tell her by and by; but I want to have a little talk with you first.
Do you know, I really believe that if my name had not been there I should
never have found courage to come back to Greentree."
"Don't talk nonsense, there's a good boy," I said; "as you have passed there is
no need to consider what you would have done if you had not succeeded."
"What a horrid snub!" he exclaimed. "And I wish you would not call me a boy.
They do not admit boys to Woolwich Academy."
"No, really?" I said, trying hard not to laugh.
"You are a most unsympathetic person, Nan," said Jack, with an aggrieved air.
I glanced at him, and saw that he was more than half in earnest. I was really
delighted to hear of his success; but I was feeling a little impatient with him for
taking me down the garden just then, for I wanted to finish the task I had in
hand before the afternoon was over. I prided myself on my methodical habits,
though I got little credit for these at home, where the others constantly
prevented my practising them. But my heart smote me when I heard Jack call
me unsympathetic. I remembered that he had neither mother nor sister with
whom he could discuss the things that most keenly interested him, so I
resolved to listen cheerfully to all he had to say.
"Am I, Jack?" I said meekly. "Well, I can only say that if I am deficient in
sympathy, it is my misfortune rather than my fault; but such as I have is all
yours. You don't know how pleased I am that you have passed."
His face brightened instantly.
"I expect it's a bit of a fluke," he said.
"It's nothing of the kind," I returned. "You have been working hard and you
have done what you hoped to do. You need not talk as if you were utterly
incapable."
"Then you don't think me altogether good for nothing, Nan?" he said, bending
his tall person to look into my face.
"Why should I, Jack?" was my response. "I wish you would not ask such
foolish questions."
"I don't see that it is foolish," he said. "I know I am altogether inferior to you,
but I did want to please you. I longed to pass for your sake."
"For my sake!" I repeated, growing suddenly hot as I realised that Jack was
not speaking in his usual light strain. "For your father's sake, you surely
mean."
"No, for your sake," he repeated. "Oh, Nan, you must know that I would rather
please you than any one else in the world!"
"Oh, Jack," I exclaimed in dismay, "do please stop talking in that absurd way!"
"Absurd!" he repeated in a tone which made me know I had hurt him. "Is it
absurd to love you, Nan? Oh, you must know how I love you! I could not
speak of it before; but, now that I am all right for the Army, I want you to
promise that you will be my wife—some time. I know it can't be yet."
I could have laughed at the audacity with which he made the proposal, had I
not seen that it was no laughing matter with him. He seemed to think I was
already won, and to expect me to pledge myself to him forthwith. And all the
while, eager and anxious as he was, he looked such a boy!
"It can never be," I said decisively. "You must never speak of this again, Jack.
It is quite impossible. What can have made you think of such a thing?"
"Why, I have always thought of it," he said, "at least that is, since you came to
stay at 'Gay Bowers.'"
"That is only six months ago," I remarked. "So now you must please banish
the idea from your mind. It could never be."
"Why not, Nan?" he asked wistfully. "Do you dislike me so much?"
"Jack, how silly you are! What will you ask next? Have we not been good
chums? But our marrying is quite out of the question. It vexes me that you
should speak of it. For one thing you are younger than I am, and altogether
too young to know your mind on this subject."
"Thank you, Nan," he retorted; "I assure you I know my own mind perfectly. I
am only six months younger than you, and you seem to have no doubt of the
soundness of your opinion. It is not such a great difference I don't see that it
matters in the least."
"I dare say it would not if we were both about thirty years of age," I replied;
"but, as it is, I feel ever so much older than you. Mother says that girls grow
old faster than boys."
"That's all rubbish," he said impatiently. "I beg your mother's pardon, but it is.
Anyhow, by your own showing, it will not matter in ten years' time, and I am
willing to wait as long as that if need be. So, Nan, give me a little hope, there's
a darling. You say you don't dislike me, so you can surely promise that we will
always be chums."
I shook my head. I hated the position in which I was placed, but I had no
doubt as to my own feelings. "I can give no promise," I said firmly.
"Nan, you are unkind," he said. "You don't understand what this means to me.
If only you would consent to wait for me, how I would work! It would be
something to live for. You should be proud of me some day, Nan."
"You have your father and your profession and your king and country to live
for," I said. "They ought to be enough."
"They are not for me!" he cried. "I don't profess to be a heroic being, but you
might make anything of me. It was the hope of winning your love that brought
me through my exam. I knew you would not look at me if I failed."
"Oh, Jack, as if that would make the least difference if I cared for you in that
way!" I cried impulsively, and the next moment was covered with confusion as
I realised how I had given myself away. I grew crimson as Jack halted and
stood looking at me with sudden, painful comprehension in his eyes.
"I see," he said slowly; "you know you care in that way for some one else. I
can guess who it is—that—"
"Stop, Jack!" I cried, so imperiously that the words died on his lips.
"Remember that you are a gentleman, and do not say what you will afterwards
be sorry for. You have no right to speak to me so, and I will not listen to you.
Never open this subject again. My answer is final!"
To make it hard for him to disobey me, I started at a run for the house. He did
not attempt to follow me. At the end of the lawn I halted for a moment and
looked back. Jack stood motionless where I had left him. He had so dejected
an air that my anger was lost in regret. I could not bear to give pain to my old
playfellow. I went on more slowly towards the house. As I entered I glanced
back again. Jack was just swinging his long limbs over the wall. He often
preferred vaulting it to making his exit by the gate. It seemed so odd an
ending to our romantic interview that I burst out laughing as I went indoors.
Colonel Hyde, who sat smoking just within the porch, looked at me in
astonishment, and I found some difficulty in replying to his query as to the
cause of my merriment. I could only say that I laughed at the way Jack jumped
over the wall. Then I made haste to tell him of Jack's success. He was
delighted, for, as the Vicar's old friend, he took a great interest in Jack.
"But why could not the young scamp come in and give me an opportunity of
congratulating him?" he asked.
I murmured that I believed Jack was in a hurry to get home, and went quickly
upstairs. By the time I reached the room my merriment had vanished. I sank
into a chair, and began to sob. I was vexed and unhappy about Jack, but my
regret for his suffering was mingled with a strange, overwhelming emotion
which I could not well have explained. My tears were not soon checked, and
when I ceased to cry I looked such an object that I could not go down when
the gong announced that tea was ready below.
After a while Aunt Patty came to discover what was the matter with me. I both
laughed and cried as I told her what had happened. Aunt Patty laughed too. It
struck her as inexpressibly droll that Jack should be in love.
"I am really very sorry," she said, suddenly growing serious. "I might have
known—I ought to have seen; but I thought Jack had more sense—no offence
intended, Nan. I don't know that I could have done any good, though, if I had
foreseen it. Poor old boy. He is a silly fellow; but I am sorry for him. He will
suffer acutely, I dare say, for a day or two."
"A day or two!" I repeated.
"Why, yes; you don't think you have broken his heart, do you, Nan? I assure
you, calf-love is soon cured. If this were the hunting season a day's hunt might
do it. As it is, I dare say your rejection will rankle in his mind till he meets with
another girl who strikes his fancy; but it will have ceased to trouble him much
long before he gets to Woolwich."
"You don't give him credit for much constancy;" I said, a trifle nettled by her
remarks, which were hardly flattering to my vanity.
"At his age there is none," said Aunt Patty. "What are you thinking of, Nan?
You don't want poor Jack to be miserable, do you?"
"Oh, dear, no!" I said, and then I laughed. "I am quite glad you think he will get
over it easily, for he seemed so hurt that it made me 'feel bad,' as Paulina
would say. I can't understand how it is that some girls think it grand and
desirable to have offers of marriage. I am sure I hope that I shall never have
another."
"Do you?" asked my aunt, with a mischievous glance. "You mean till the right
one comes-eh, Nan?"
"That will be never," I said decidedly; "I am quite sure that I shall never marry. I
shall be the old maid of the family."
"There are no 'old maids' nowadays," said Aunt Patty cheerfully; "the term is
quite out of date. So many careers are open to women that a single life may
be a most useful and honourable one. When you are at the head of a college,
Nan, you won't want to change places with any toiling mistress of a house like
myself."
"I am afraid not," I said, with a laugh that was not very mirthful. "I should
certainly never choose to do domestic work for its own sake."
"Ah, well, dear, you will soon be able to take to your books again," said Aunt
Patty, kissing me ere she went away.
She meant to cheer me by so speaking; but somehow her words had quite the
opposite effect. My tastes had not changed, yet something within me rebelled
against the thought of going home and taking up a severe course of study
again.
CHAPTER XXI
THE RETURN OF THE AMERICANS
"IT is a restless age," observed Colonel Hyde the next morning, as with the
utmost precision and deliberation, he opened his egg. "My godson was in
London yesterday, yet he must be off to town again by the first train this
morning. Then he talks of joining a party of friends who are going to Norway
next week for some fishing."
Aunt Patty and I glanced at each other. Fishing might effect a cure as well as
hunting.
"He needs and deserves a holiday after working so well," my aunt said. "He
has been at home a great deal of late."
"His father has not had much of his company," remarked the colonel. "Jack
has been going up to London continually, and whatever leisure he had he
spent here."
"Does the vicar complain that he has too little of his son's society?" inquired
Aunt Patty. "It always seems to me that he prefers the company of his books,
since Jack and he have so little in common. But he must be very pleased that
Jack has passed his exam."
"Has he passed?" exclaimed Miss Cottrell eagerly. "When did you hear? Why
did no one tell me?"
It was not quite easy to answer the latter question. I trembled lest Miss Cottrell
with her talent for investigation should discover why Jack had become
suddenly desirous of change of scene. Happily she was just then too
absorbed in anticipating the return of her fiancé to devote much attention to
the affairs of others.
They were expected to arrive in time for afternoon tea. I watched Miss Cottrell
drive off, radiant with satisfaction, to meet them at the station, then I took a
book and seated myself amid the flowers in my favourite nook on the top of
the porch. It was a warm afternoon, no breeze reached me where I sat, and
the air was heavy with the perfume of the roses and jasmine that grew about
the porch. Bees were buzzing about me, and now and then a white butterfly
would flit past my book. It was a book on Goethe which Alan Faulkner had
advised me to read and which father had procured for me from a London
library. I was truly interested in it, yet I found it hard to fix my attention on its
pages this afternoon. The sweet summer atmosphere and the stillness,
broken only by the hum of insect life, made me drowsy. My book dropped, my
head sank sideways, and I passed into a pleasant dream.
I was wandering through a wood with Alan Faulkner beside me when the stir
and bustle of arrival below roused me to consciousness of my actual
surroundings. How long I had been sleeping I could not tell, but the wagonette
stood before the house, and as I sprang up and rubbed my eyes, I heard
Paulina's high, thin American tones calling for "Nan." I ran down and we met
at the foot of the stairs.
"Nan—you dear old Nan! Why weren't you on the doorstep to welcome me?"
cried Paulina as she threw her arms round me. "Come, you need not be afraid
to kiss me! I am warranted perfectly harmless."
"That's more than I'd warrant you, Pollie Dicks," came as an aside from her
father.
"Indeed, I am not afraid," I responded, a little surprised at the fervour of her

embrace, "and I'm very glad you've come back."
"That's right. I can't tell you how good it feels to be at 'Gay Bowers' again!"
cried Paulina gleefully. "But say, Nan, what's the matter with you? I declare
you've been sleeping! You lazy thing! It's time I came back to wake you up."
"She'll rouse you all—you may trust Pollie Dicks for that!" cried her father,
rubbing his hands, while Miss Cottrell hovered near him, looking absurdly self-
conscious. "Say, doesn't she look as if scarlet fever agreed with her?"
She certainly did. I had expected to see her looking thin and pale and languid,
but it was not so. She had put on flesh in her convalescence, and the sea air
had given her a more ruddy hue than I had yet seen her wear. She appeared
to be in robust health, and was undoubtedly in excellent spirits. I need not
have been anxious on the score of her happiness.
"If you mention scarlet fever again, I'll fine you a thousand pounds!" she cried,
turning on her father. "I don't want to hear the name again, do you
understand? All the same, Nan," she added, turning to me, "it is not half bad
having a fever. It is good for the complexion. It rejuvenates you altogether, I
guess. You'll be sorry one of these days that you haven't had it. Anyway, I've
had a jolly time for the last fortnight, with nothing to do save eat and drink and
take mine ease."
"You have changed if you have grown fond of repose," I said, as we went
upstairs.
"Ah, Nan! Sharp-tongued as ever!" she replied. "I know you thought me a
terrible gadabout, and I certainly never went to sleep in the middle of the day
like some one I know. But you must have been deadly dull without me, and
your cousin gone too, and the Professor. What a miserable little party you
must have been here!"
"We have managed to bear up somehow," I said, smiling; "but it is good to

have you here again, Paulina."
I spoke in all sincerity. I had not taken readily to Paulina Dicks. Her odd,
American ways had jarred on me when first she came. I had not realised how
much I liked her, or how I missed her, till now that her eager, vivid personality
once more made a pleasant stir in the house. I think I laughed more in the first
half-hour after her arrival than I had laughed during the whole of her absence.
A cheerful disposition wields a potent charm.
Yet I had seen Paulina other than cheerful. What a different Paulina she was
from the girl who had gone away in sore anxiety and dread! She made no
allusion to the manner of her departure, yet I knew it was in her mind as she
opened the door of her room. I had suggested to aunt that we should make a
little alteration in the arrangement of Paulina's room. So the bedstead now
stood in another position, and the aspect of the room did not inevitably recall
the long, weary night in which she had suffered so much. I saw that she noted
the change with satisfaction. All she said was, "Nan, you are a darling!" It was
not Pollie Dicks's way to indulge in sentiment or make a parade of emotion.
Yet ere we slept that night she opened her heart to me as she had not done
save on that night when she looked death in the face and was afraid.
Dinner had been over about half-an-hour. I chanced to be alone in the

drawing-room. It was growing dusk, but the lamps were not yet lighted, when I
heard Paulina's voice at the open window.
"Do come out, Nan," she cried. "I want to show you something."
I ran out willingly enough. It was lovely in the garden at that hour. After the
heat of the day the air seemed deliciously cool and sweet. The moon was
slowly rising above the tree-tops. A soft breeze whispered through the leaves.
The flowers were giving forth their sweetest perfumes.
"Oh, how lovely!" I exclaimed as I drew a deep breath.
"Hush," said Paulina, with a warning gesture, "not a word! I want to show you
something."
She led me noiselessly along the grass till we reached the tall thick hedge at
the end of the lawn. Then she signed to me to peer stealthily over it. I did so,
and perceived Josiah Dicks and Miss Cottrell pacing arm in arm the narrow
path between the apple trees. As a precaution against chill, for the dew was
falling, his long neck and lean shoulders were enveloped in a Scotch plaid.
She wore her huge garden hat, and had wrapped herself in a red shawl. They
were certainly an odd-looking couple.
"Romeo and Juliet," whispered Paulina, and I nearly exploded.
JOSIAH DICKS AND MISS COTTRELL PACING ARM IN ARM.
"You naughty girl!" I said as we withdrew to a safe distance. "But I am glad

you can laugh. I feared it might be a trouble to you."
"What—the betrothal of my youthful papa?" she said, laughing. "Well, I'll own
up that it did vex me for about fifteen minutes."
"Not longer?" I asked.
"No," she said naïvely, "for I was convinced upon reflection that it was a
blessing in disguise. You see, I knew she could not take my place in his heart.
He will always love me best."
"Oh!" I said.
"Do you doubt it," she asked with some warmth, "when I am his child—his
own Pollie? How can a woman whom he has known but a few weeks, be more
to him than me? Why, he did not propose until I gave him permission."
"He asked your permission?" I repeated in amazement.
"Certainly. We talked it over together, and I came to the conclusion that it

would be a convenience to both me and poppa. You see, he is not very
strong; the fact is, he is getting old, and he wants some one to fuss over him
continually, and look after his little comforts. Miss Cottrell loves doing that sort
of thing, and I don't. Besides, you know, I am a good deal younger than he is."
"Naturally," I said.
"And our tastes are different," she went on quite seriously, "so I want to live
my own life; but it will be a comfort to me to know when I am not with poppa
that he is being well looked after and made happy in his own way. And I like
Kate Cottrell. I have no fear that she will plague me as a step-mother."
"I should certainly advise her not to interfere with you," I said, laughing. "And
so you graciously permitted your father to woo her?"
"Yes; and when he was getting a ring for her, he got me one, too, to mark the
occasion," said Paulina, stretching forth a finger for my inspection. "Isn't it a
beauty? Poppa is always giving me jewels, though he threatens that a day
may come when he will no longer be able to do so. He talks sometimes as if
he were afraid of suddenly losing his money; but I don't think that is likely,
though all sorts of things happen in business. I should not like him to lose his
money. It's nice to have plenty to spend, isn't it?"
"I am sure you find it so," I replied; "for myself, I have never had the
experience."
"How dryly you say it!" laughed Paulina. "But now, Nan, tell me—why has the
Professor taken himself off, and Jack Upsher? What is the meaning of it?
Have you been breaking hearts here during my absence?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said, thankful for the veil of twilight. "Professor
Faulkner has gone to the assistance of a friend who is ill. He is taking classes
as a locum tenens in some Scotch college."
"Oh, I know—Miss Cottrell told me that," she replied impatiently; "but I guess I
can see as far through a brick wall as most people, and I know there's
something behind. You can't throw dust in my eyes."
"I have no wish to do so," I said coolly; "there is no occasion that I know of."
"You are an obstinate little mortal, Nan," said Paulina severely; "I hoped you
were going to be my friend. I meant to tell you, you might call me 'Pollie.' No
one has done so yet except poppa and one other person, though I presume
Miss Cottrell thinks she has a right to do so now; indeed she tried it on
yesterday."
I nudged Paulina to make her aware that her father and his companion had
emerged from the sheltered path and were taking their way to the house.
Paulina responded by throwing her arm round my waist and drawing me
quickly behind a bush.
"What a couple of old dears they look!" she said irreverently. "I don't want
them to see us, for I do not mean to go in yet. It is too lovely."
I assented eagerly. The moon was now visible far beyond the trees and shed
its radiance full upon the lawn. The shadow of each tree and bush was
sharply defined upon the grass. Bats were beginning to flit on heavy wing
across the garden. The light breeze which was sweeping through the trees
was not too cool for us. Paulina linked her arm in mine, and we turned towards
the path between the apple trees.
The beauty and mystery of the night laid its spell upon us, making:
"Deep silence in the heart,

For thought to do her part."
For some minutes neither of us spoke. Then Paulina began to speak in a low,
soft voice, very unlike her usual high-pitched tones.
"Nan, do you remember that night before I went away?"
"I remember it well," I said.
"How frightened I was when I knew that I had scarlet fever—how I thought I
should die as mamma did?"
"Yes," I murmured. As if I could forget!
"I shall never forget what you said that night and how you prayed with me,"
she went on. "You don't know how you helped me. I learned to pray that night,
Nan."

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“The Defenders of Liberty is a major contribution to the history of libertarian

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purely rationalistic homo economicus. My approach is not to summarise the work

Chapter 6 will focus on the Austrian School of Economics noting the

1 Liberty, Human Nature, Individualism, and Property Rights 1

3 Hobbes and Locke on Human Nature; Locke on Property

Splitting Hairs Between Hume and Locke on Justice and

5 The Nineteenth Century139

6 The Austrian School175

7 The London School225

8 What Went Wrong and What Is to Be Done?251

Table 1.1 The relationship between power and liberty 9

The Importance of Definitions

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Intellectuals have some options artificially to increase their market value.

who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical

1. It must not contradict human nature.

The modern concept of ‘human rights’, tainted by Rousseauian thinking,

from virtually everything’.31 Since the precondition of liberty is the estab-

1. ‘the social safety net’, in which in addition to the functions of the

Table 1.1 The relationship between power and liberty

The human propensity for classification and the diversity of individual

Hayek distinguishes between ‘true’ and ‘false’ individualism. For Hayek,

This is a restatement of John Locke’s ‘when [their] own Preservation

And later: ‘Society is concerted action, cooperation. … The individual

1. There is no authoritative allocation of work.

UNCLE REDMAYNE adhered to his resolve, and took Agneta back to

In spite of all misgivings, I felt wonderfully lighthearted when father and I

"Really! Why, what has become of Professor Faulkner?" asked my father,

"He has gone to Edinburgh on business—something to do with a post at a

"Then he is coming back again," father said quietly.

"Well, I won't be so hard-hearted as to say that she deserved to suffer," replied

I smiled at the sly significance of my aunt's words as I glanced round my

"When will they be back?" I asked.

"The Dickses? On Wednesday week," aunt replied.

I took an early opportunity of congratulating Miss Cottrell on her engagement,

"Oh!" I said. "But he has gone away!"

"Only for a few weeks," said Miss Cottrell carelessly.

"No," I said dreamily; "it is a kind of carriage, I believe."

"Oh, I am glad!" I said involuntarily.

Aunt Patty laughed.

"Oh, well," he said smiling, "there was a reason for that."

"No, really?" I said, trying hard not to laugh.

His face brightened instantly.

"I expect it's a bit of a fluke," he said.

"Why not, Nan?" he asked wistfully. "Do you dislike me so much?"

"A day or two!" I repeated.

"Indeed, I am not afraid," I responded, a little surprised at the fervour of her

"We have managed to bear up somehow," I said, smiling; "but it is good to

Dinner had been over about half-an-hour. I chanced to be alone in the

"Oh, how lovely!" I exclaimed as I drew a deep breath.

JOSIAH DICKS AND MISS COTTRELL PACING ARM IN ARM.

"You naughty girl!" I said as we withdrew to a safe distance. "But I am glad

"Not longer?" I asked.

1 Liberty, Human Nature, Individualism, and Property Rights 1

3 Hobbes and Locke on Human Nature; Locke on Property

5 The Nineteenth Century139

6 The Austrian School175

7 The London School225

8 What Went Wrong and What Is to Be Done?251

Table 1.1 The relationship between power and liberty 9

The Importance of Definitions