Government action and morality

This book is intended for anyone interested in the relation T ship between government action and morality in a liberal democracy. Parts of the argument have already appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly (October 1961) and Philosophy (January 1964) and I am indebted to the editors and publishers of these journals for permission to make use of the material. In adapting and developing my arguments for this book I have been conscious of the interests of the general reader and have tried to keep my discussion free from technical terms and to illustrate the main points with examples taken from the national Press. Any suggestion of political bias in the examples is accidental since my concern is with general principles. These are intended to hold for all liberal-democracies, although I discuss them here in terms of British political institutions. In the inevitable delay between writ ing and publication the examples may lose their topicality, but it is to be hoped that, like the newspapers which line drawers and shelves, dated examples will have their own fascination.