Chesterton's personal contribution to the political thought of his day lies in his criticism of the humaneness of legislative proposals. A thing that is human is commonly a very different matter from a thing that is merely humanitarian. G.K.C. is hotly human and almost bitterly anti-humanitarian. The difference between the two is illustrated by the institution of the gallows, which is human, but not humanitarian. In its essentials it consists of a rope and a branch, which is precisely the apparatus that an angry man might employ in order to rid himself of his captured enemy. Herbert Spencer, seeking in his old age for means whereby to increase the happiness of mankind, invented a humanitarian apparatus for the infliction of capital punishment. It consisted of a glorified roundabout, on which the victim was laid for his last journey. As it revolved, the blood-pressure on his head gradually increased (or decreased, I forget which) until he fell asleep and died painlessly. This is humanitarianism. The process is safe and sure (so long as the machine did not stop suddenly), highly efficient, bloodless and painless. But just because it is so humanitarian it offends one a great deal more than the old-fashioned gallows. The only circumstance which can justify violence is anger. The only circumstance which can justify the taking of human life is anger. And anger may be expressed by a rope or a knife-edge, but not by a roundabout or any other morbid invention of a cold-blooded philosopher such as the electric chair, or the lethal chamber. In the same way, if flogging is to continue as a punishment, it must be inflicted by a man and not by a machine. Now this distinction (made without prejudice as to Chesterton's views on capital or corporal punishment) holds good through his whole criticism of modern legislation. He believes that it is better that a man and his family should starve in their own slum, than that they should be moulded, by a cumbersome apparatus of laws and officials and inspectors, into a tame, mildly prosperous and mildly healthy group of individuals, whose opinions, occupations and homes should be provided for them. On these lines he attacks whatever in his opinion will tend to put men into a position where their souls will be less their own. He believes that the man who has been costered by the Government into a mediocre state of life will be less of a man than one who has been left unbothered by officials, and has had to shift for himself. Very largely, therefore, Chesterton's political faith is an up-to-date variety of the tenets of the Self-Help School, which was own brother to the Manchester School. And here we come to a curious contradiction, the first of a series. For Chesterton loathes the Manchester School.