 I've always been interested in the intellectual foundations of the debate on our topic, and since nobody else seems to be doing this historical approach, I thought it appropriate, if I said so, in this area. There seems to be a consensus that the typical intellectual today is more ready than most to embrace government intervention in education. But what of the intellectuals who were advocates of laissez-faire in the 18th and 19th centuries? They were surely not approved of today's extent of intervention, but as I shall argue, their tendency to compromise seriously weakened the defences against the growth of an all-encompassing state. Now, from all the early intellectual writers, I'm going to select the political economists, because this is an area I'm most familiar with. And here again, I have to limit myself to three people, Tom Payne and Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill. I may not get round to John Stuart Mill because of the limitation, but I'll do my best. Now, first of all, Tom Payne. Let me backtrack it a little bit. Before I get on to Tom Payne, let me say something about all three writers. The political economists were insistent on one aspect of education, and that is that it should never be free. There should always be price. There should always be a positive price. And with a positive price comes competition. Adam Smith of all the three was the most insistent on this point. If people have to pay at the door of the school, they have to pay a price, and then they choose another school because they're dissatisfied, that brings pressure to bear on the existing school because they automatically lose revenue. With free education, with inverted commas around that free all the time, have you noticed? With free education, there's not that pressure, there's not that incentive of facing public schools, faced with losing customers. But anyway, let me just repeat that point. All the political economists, except Karl Marx and Engels, all the economists of the 19th century did not want free education. Now, to say something about Tom Payne, and I may say, let me confess that these three writers, to some extent have been heroes of mine, and I feel a little bit guilty with my criticisms that I'm going to put forth, but let me also add that the criticisms are partly from the benefit of hindsight. Tom Payne's Rights of Man, first published in 1791, contained an agreement that the quantity of education, or contained the observation that the quantity of education was insufficient, but the shortfall was due not to the unwillingness of parents to educate their children adequately, but to the simple fact of poverty. But poverty in turn, Tom Payne tells us, was due almost entirely to excessive taxes on the poor. General taxation, and especially the excise tax, had been increasing substantially in the late 18th century. The land tax paid by the aristocrats had, in contrast, been falling. Just over one half of the total revenue went on servicing the huge national debt. The remainder went on current government expenses that to Payne believed to be extravagant. And Payne insisted that money taken in taxation from average families was much more than enough to finance a basic education for their children. Much of this revenue incidentally came from the poor rates. Well, after producing an agenda for radical reduction of government expenditure, Payne said about discussing how to dispose of what he called the surplus. Instead of proposing simple reduction of taxes on the poor, to which the logic of his argument pointed, he advocated instead a conditional remission of taxes. The condition was that parents should send their children to school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. And who should monitor such a voucher system? Payne had no qualms in proposing that it be done by the minister of the church parish. I quote Payne's words, that the ministers of every parish to certify jointly to an office for that purpose, that this educational duty be performed, end of quote. Well then, after speaking up for the average man, therefore, Payne proceeded to indicate that ultimately he mistrusted the average man. My interpretation anyway, because the implication was that if simple tax reduction was resorted to, the people could not be depended on to spend enough of their increased disposable incomes on education. Yet Payne's initial argument was that it was heavy taxation that was the main obstacle to private purchase of education. He had no evidence of the reluctance of parents to buy education. No evidence on basic family preferences. And even if he was doubtful of the ability and willingness of parents to spend on education, there remained the issue of liberty. Did Payne's rights of man not extend to freedom to decide on the type and amount of education of his or her children? Unfortunately, however, Payne failed to address this question. Payne's voucher system, and he was probably the earliest originator of vouchers, his voucher scheme demanded schooling, schooling. Yet this was not the only vehicle for education. Why then did Payne superimpose his own choice? And why should ministers of religion have the sole right to monitor the voucher program? Would they not increasingly modify the definition of education to become more and more in conformity with their particular religious greed? And what constraints were there on the size of the special office that Payne wanted the ministers to report to? He appears to have paid no heed at all to the canceling of William Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, at the time. Godwin warned about the potential growth of bloated bureaucracies that would be encouraged by late 18th century proposals for what was called a national education. Well, so much for Tom Payne. Now on to Adam Smith, and again I feel most guilty of all in this case because I'm usually favorably disposed to the father of economics. In his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Smith, as you all know, argues that economic growth will best occur when natural liberty is respected and leads to specialization or participation in the division of labor. But when the division of labor reaches its fullest development, Smith tells us, in the fifth book of the Wealth of Nations, when the division of labor is in its fullest flowering in the long run, the worker, and I quote Adam Smith's words, the worker becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become, end of quote. Smith's forecast of the degeneration of labor is based on one condition, that government fails to take some pains to prevent it. That's his words, fails to take some pains to prevent it. The main task of government, Smith argued, was to secure the education of the common people. But since Adam Smith explains that government in his own country, Scotland, had for a long time actually taken the necessary pains, the implication is that the road to cultural destruction in Scotland in the 18th century was closed, firmly closed, at least in Scotland, in England with some of the others. So just like Tom Payne, Adam Smith revealed his mistrust of ordinary people when it comes to their duties to educate their children. But then if you read further it becomes more complicated and a bit confused. In his lectures, delivered to students in Glasgow in the 1760s, Smith is more explicit. Once his market economy fully establishes the division of labor, and I quote him again, the minds of men are contracted and rendered incapable of elevation. Education is despised or at least neglected. That's what the market does to people, the cultural effects. It's astonishing, I think, when you first read those words. He observes that in contrast, people of some rank and fortune have money to afford education. And Smith declares, it is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them even in infancy. Well, consider this point. If it's poverty, and if parents can't afford the education, then how can you, Mr. Smith, tell us they don't want education? How can you tell us they despise education? You can't have it both ways. If they can't afford the education, they're not having it. If the main reason for not having it is money, then that's it. You can't say it's their preferences. You can't say they despise education. All my three writers make this kind of error. But I say that Smith is a bit confused beyond this. You see, his statement includes the fact that the Scots had passed legislation supporting a parochial school, one school in every parish, one school in every parish. And he says that this legislation had made most people in Scotland at the time able to read and a large number able to write. And we have to ask ourselves in retrospect whether this was due to the legislation or whether it's due to something else. The Scottish Act of 1696 laid down that a school should be erected in every parish and that teachers' salaries be met by a tax on local landowners and tenants. This schooling however was not made compulsory by law and neither was it made free. The parental fees made up a big part of the teachers' salaries were paid by every social class. The Scots did not have free and compulsory education, schooling rather, until about the same time as England did in the 1880s. Now the more Smith championed the Scots parochial system, therefore the more implicit credit he was paying to parents. Why? Because parents are paying fees for that parochial education and they weren't compelled to go to school. Here they were without compulsion paying money at Smith's parochial school. There was some subsidy, sure. The school building was subsidized by local landowners but it wasn't free. I mean there were other costs besides the building. So the parents' action then involuntarily paying fees to purchase education at the parish schools was obviously a tribute to parents in Smith's own time. Despite his contrary statement in his lectures that education would be despised when the market system flourished after the division of labour was well established. More interesting still, this is an economic history point. It was the fee-paying private schools, not the parochial schools, the private schools that were bearing the main burden of Scottish education in terms of number of scholars. For every one Scottish parochial school pupil in 1818 there were two non-parochial school pupils and the non-parochial school pupils, private school pupils outnumbered the parochial pupils by much more than two to one in the growing industrial areas of Glasgow. The very areas where Smith argued there was greater need for schooling because parents would despise education in those industrial places. And it's a bit hard to find all this in Smith because generally he prefers private institutions, private incentives and property ownership, property rights and that sort of thing. He had no confidence in the economic judgment of human beings in collective organisations in which responsibility was separated from ownership. Well, in the private schools I've just talked about, the non-parochial schools which were flourishing, responsibility was typically not separated from ownership because they were privately owned schools and their growth, the growth of these privately owned schools because if you didn't like them you called them private adventure schools. That was the term given to the opponents. But the growth of these schools, Smith might well have argued, was in no small part due to the natural liberty that A, allowed them to exist and B, created the growing incomes that helped create the demand for them. It's true that private schools often received private endowments or subsidies when somebody dies and leaves money to a school that's called an endowment. And Smith was rather critical of excessive private endowments and some people here when you start private venture systems might want to learn a bit more about Smith's views on this. You can have excessive private endowment especially if that endowment goes to the salary of the teacher because that makes his income independent of his efforts in front of his customers. If you're getting a guaranteed income from over there you don't care so much of the part of the income that's coming from your customers. That roughly speaking was Smith's objection. So don't overdo this endowment business. Keep enough margin there for the parents to pay out of their own pockets. Well, the substantial growth in the Industrial Revolution in the hands of Scotland such as Greenock, Paisley and Glasgow was accomplished largely by the so-called, as I've said, adventure schools or for-profit establishments. And the practice of endowing schools was much more prevalent south of the border in England. Well, that's about 20 minutes, Marshall. I haven't got to John Stuart Mill. Maybe a bit later on I may have time to say something about him but perhaps I better stop right there for now. Thank you, Dr. West. When I discovered the libertarian philosophy many, many years ago Dr. West's work was one of the most influential works that caused me to start thinking about separating school and state and it's quite an honor to be here commenting on a talk by him. I'd like to make just a short comment about comparing the compromisers of the 18th and 19th century and the compromisers of today. Smith was one of the first ones, Adam Smith and Mill and Payne and Ricardo were one of the first ones to develop this idea of human liberty. For many centuries, freedom was described as simply the absence of physical restraint. If you were not held, if you were not in jail, you were considered free. And along comes Smith and says, no, freedom means more than that. It means more than the absence of physical restraint. It means the right to engage in an enterprise without a license or to accumulate wealth without state interference, to pursue education without interference. But I think it's important to recognize that these early thinkers were looking through a glass very darkly when it comes to developing what this idea of freedom is. They were among the first, the first discoverers, if you will. A classic mistake that they all made, of course, was on the labor theory of value, that the value of an item is based on how much labor goes into producing it. Well, it depends on people 100 years later, Minger or Valra, to say, look, the value of an item is not based on how much labor goes into producing it, it's based on how the person perceives it. And the point is, is that sometimes it takes later thinkers to improve upon the thinkers that first came up with the idea, the first began developing the idea. 200 years later, after we've had time to study the ideas of the founders or the 19th century political economists and read later thinkers, Mises and Hayek, West, we don't have the room for excuse like the early thinkers did, so that when today people advocate the compromises, the vouchers, the charter schools, what is the excuse for that? Clearly, the voucher of people falling into two camps, those that truly believe in vouchers as an end, which means that they do say that the state has a role in education, or they say, I cannot let people know my true feelings about abolishing public schooling totally, getting the state totally out of education because people won't take me seriously, I won't be credible. Well, how much respect can you give to that person? A person that violates all standards of integrity, all standards of principle in order to be popular, to be accepted. And I think it's up to us that have broken through who have reached a higher level of awareness, a higher level of consciousness to stick with principle, that the state has absolutely no role in education whatsoever, that compulsory attendance laws can be repealed, school taxes can be repealed, and all state involvement in education can be removed. Throughout history, people have responded in monumental ways to ideas and to ideals and to principles. And I think it's up to us to improve on these thinkers that we're looking through a glass darkly and carry humanity up to the highest levels of educational freedom that we've ever seen. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. Let me second Pumper's opening statement about the honor it is to share a platform with Professor West. You can't be a libertarian very long before running across Dr. West's name and then looking up articles and books because you know immediately there's something significant there, not just on education, but his work on Adam Smith, which was a great source of information and inspiration to me. When Professor West was going through how these thinkers mentioned or believed that the poor, what they used to call the lower orders, I guess, didn't value education. I thought of a very charming quotation by James Mill, father of John Stuart Mill, which is in Professor West's book. I wish I had the text of it here, but to the effect that around London where poor people lived, James Mill noticed that even when families were in such sad straits that they could only scrape together some potatoes for food for weeks at a time, they still managed to come up with money to send their kids to school. This was decades before there was compulsory universal schooling in England, blasting to smithereens this idea that the lower orders were not interested in such things. One of the things I came across in working on my own book was that there was great concern in England that the lower orders, because they were literate, were too readily reading Thomas Paine's rights of man, and this was seen as something of a threat to the higher orders. This sort of goes against the idea that government and the elite of a nation is always interested in having an educated population. They have a long record of actually discouraging education, taxing newsprint, for example, passing laws prohibiting slaves from learning to read, things of that nature. I also share Professor West's view about taking heroes and pointing out some of the warts, but, of course, I guess to some extent they had them. Two heroes I'll mention, unfortunately, also follow in this line. Richard Cobden, the great free trader and advocate of non-interventionism and foreign policy in 19th century England. A great hero of mine. I was drawn to him first because of his work on free trade and then how he tied it into free trade being a great facilitator of peace and a great force for harmonizing people's interests around the world. It saddened me to learn that he was an advocate of government schooling as I understand it on the grounds of some sort of public goods theory. I don't know how explicit it was, but the idea being that there are benefits to education that go beyond the student that spill over into the general community and therefore the community, and the community won't, people in the community themselves won't pay for this child's education, but nevertheless they'll reap benefits. By the way, if you want to see that argument totally obliterated, I refer you to Professor West's book Education in the States, just a masterly, total dismantling of any such theory. And then finally I'll close on this, Thomas Jefferson, a hero of mine, probably a hero of many people in the room. It might sadden you to learn that he was also an advocate of state-sponsored schools, although with some caveats, for example he was against compulsory attendance. He thought that taxes should be used to support schools. I don't believe he wanted the government to actually operate schools, but nevertheless support them. But he was against compulsory attendance. As he put it, it is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated than the shock, the common feelings and ideas by the forcible carrying away an education of the infant against the will of the father. Now, Jefferson also had a more modest idea of what education should be, simply more or less teaching children to read and write. He didn't have sort of the social engineer's vision, but Joel Spring, the education historian, pointed out that even Jefferson could not resist the temptation of using the educational system to perpetuate what he considered to be political truth. Very often when I do interviews, radio interviews about this, people will say, well, can you name a country where there is a separation of school and state? And I said it would be very surprising to find one. I mean, what politician could resist gaining hold of such a sensitive function in a society and using it to shape the young? I mean, you know, the idea is almost unthinkable that a politician could possibly resist that, so it's not surprising we don't find this, which means we have a lot of work to do for ever to bring this about. I think I will end on that note. John Stuart Mill, I know Professor West will probably have a chance to say something about it. He's a very strange bird on this and many other issues. He's never been one of my great heroes. I do like the line in his nice little book, partly at least nice, on liberty where he said, he who knows only his own side of a case doesn't know it very well. And I think that's something we should keep in mind if I can make a strategic point here that it would do us all very well to be reading the other side and knowing how they defend state education so we can be that much better in refuting them. Thank you.