effectual mutilation or inhibition of the machine system would gradually push business enterprise to the wall ; whereas with a free growth of the machine system business principles would presently fall into abeyance.
The institutional basis of business enterprise — the system of natural rights — appears to be a peculiarly unstable affair. There is no way of retaining it under changing circumstances, and there is no way of returning to it after circumstances have changed. It is a hybrid growth, a blend of personal freedom and equality on the one hand and of prescriptive rights on the other hand. The institutions and points of law under the naturalrights scheme appear to be of an essentially provisional character. There is relatively great flexibility and possibility of growth and change ;
natural rights are singularly insecure under any change of circumstances. The maxim is well approved that eternal vigilance is the price of (natural) liberty. When, as now, this system is endangered by socialistic or anarchistic disaffection there is no recourse that will carry the institutional apparatus back to a secure natural-rights basis. The system of natural liberty was the product of a peaceful r%ime of handicraft and petty trade; but continued peace and industry presently carried the cultural growth beyond the phase of natural righte by giving rise to the machine process and /the large business ; and these are breaking down fthe structure of natural rights by making these llrights nugatory on the one hand and by cutting ftway the spiritual foundations of them on the ibther hand. Natural rights being a by-product of peaceful industry, they cannot be reinstated by a recourse to warlike habits and a coercive government, since warlike habits and coercion are alien to the natural-rights