After Mill, Herbert Spencer presented the most elaborate defence of the Laissez faire or Individualist theory. He asserted that the “State existed because of the inherent selfishness perversity of human beings, who could be curbed only by the State from doing violence or injury to others.” As he said, government exists because crime exists. It means that the government has only negative functions to prevent and punish crime and violence. It has no positive function.
It must not help the citizens by providing education, sanitation, or health facilities. He condemned the construction of public works by the State, except for national defence, because they restrict the liberty of trade. Spencer was deeply influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he applied to human society. He believed though somewhat inconsistently, that society is like an animal organism, in which the same sort of struggle for existence is taking place as in the animal world, as a result of which only the fittest individuals- survive.
Accordingly, Spencer denounced all forms of State relief to the poor, the sick, the invalid and the like He condemned all social efforts on behalf of the distressed. Thus the gentle creed of Mill was transformed by Spencer into a harsh and relentless doctrine of the survival of the fittest. It was the reason why Individualist theory became discredited and unpopular at the end of the 19th century, and socialist theories became more popular.