The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State

It is not possible to engage in principled political thinking without considering the fundamentals of what is a state and what it should do. The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Auberon Herbert’s clarion call for freedom of the individual, came at a time of rising socialism and state expansion in Britain. It urged a complete turn toward freedom as the one way forward — a freedom that rules out all impositions on person and property under whatever guise they take.


This major work remains among the best articulations of the liberty message ever written.