PART IV

POLITICS

3i3

State ought to take upon itself to direct by thepublic wisdom, and what it ought to leave, withas little interference as possible, to individualexertion.” We have to discriminate betweenwhat Bentham, in his forgotten but usefulnomenclature, used to term Agenda and Non-Agenda, and to do this without Bentham’s priorpresumption that interference is, at the sametime, “generally needless” and “generally per-nicious .” 1 Perhaps the chief task of Econo-mists at this hour is to distinguish afresh theAgenda of Government from the Non-Agenda-,and the companion task of Politics is to de-vise forms of Government within a Democracywhich shall be capable of accomplishing theAgenda. I will illustrate what I have in mindby two examples.

(1) I believe that in many cases the ideal sizefor the unit of control and organisation liessomewhere between the individual and themodern State. I suggest, therefore, that pro-gress lies in the growth and the recognition ofsemi-autonomous bodies within the State—bodies whose criterion of action within theirown field is solely the public good as theyunderstand it, and from whose deliberationsmotives of private advantage are excluded,though some place it may still be necessary toleave, until the ambit of men’s altruism growswider, to the separate advantage of particulargroups, classes, or faculties—bodies which in

1 Bentham’s Manual of Political Economy , published post-humously, in Bowring’s edition (1843).