"There never yet has been a great system sustained by force under which all the best faculties of men have not slowly withered"
About this Quote
Auberon Herbert is trying to make coercion look less like a necessary evil and more like a slow-acting poison. His line turns the usual defense of “order” on its head: even when a force-backed system appears “great” - stable, expansive, efficient - its success is purchased by degrading the very human capacities that make a society worth having. The withering isn’t sudden tyranny; it’s bureaucratic, habitual, almost polite. Force doesn’t just punish dissent, it trains everyone to outsource judgment.
The intent is unmistakably liberal in the 19th-century English sense: suspicion of the growing administrative state, of imperial confidence, of laws that claim moral authority while relying on compulsion. Herbert, a leading voluntaryist, wants readers to notice how power reshapes character. When obedience becomes a civic virtue, the best faculties - initiative, moral courage, intellectual independence, the knack for cooperation without supervision - stop getting exercised. People learn to comply, to game the rules, to demand enforcement rather than persuasion. Rulers, too, atrophy: they begin to confuse command with competence.
What makes the sentence work is its patient certainty. “Never yet” and “slowly” read like someone pointing to a long historical record rather than issuing a prophecy. “Sustained by force” is the tell: Herbert isn’t denying that systems can be built with coercion; he’s arguing they can’t remain “great” without corroding their human substrate. It’s a warning aimed at reformers as much as autocrats: if your plan requires force to endure, expect the cost to be paid in the inner lives of the people you claim to improve.
The intent is unmistakably liberal in the 19th-century English sense: suspicion of the growing administrative state, of imperial confidence, of laws that claim moral authority while relying on compulsion. Herbert, a leading voluntaryist, wants readers to notice how power reshapes character. When obedience becomes a civic virtue, the best faculties - initiative, moral courage, intellectual independence, the knack for cooperation without supervision - stop getting exercised. People learn to comply, to game the rules, to demand enforcement rather than persuasion. Rulers, too, atrophy: they begin to confuse command with competence.
What makes the sentence work is its patient certainty. “Never yet” and “slowly” read like someone pointing to a long historical record rather than issuing a prophecy. “Sustained by force” is the tell: Herbert isn’t denying that systems can be built with coercion; he’s arguing they can’t remain “great” without corroding their human substrate. It’s a warning aimed at reformers as much as autocrats: if your plan requires force to endure, expect the cost to be paid in the inner lives of the people you claim to improve.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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