fore be neglected. It was not till after thirty or forty years of miserable suffering that the public conscience was roused to the fact that the industrial and commercial prosperity of the community was being purchased at the expense of the physical injury and moral degradation of men, women and children, and that the material prosperity might be purchased too dear. So far from its being true to identify the prosperity of the community and the prosperity of individuals it is safer to generalise from the experience of the early nineteenth century, and to say that the material progress of society, especially when it is rapid, involves a certain amount of individual suffering.

This seems to be a pessimist doctrine, and there is a temptation at the present day to fall into the old error, though from the opposite side. It is plausible to maintain that whatever is for the material good of the individuals who form the community, is also for the good of the community as a whole. But though it appears that national wealth consists of the sum of individual wealth, we are mistaken if we think of national life as consisting only of the aggregate of individual lives of the men and women of the country at the present time. We cannot identify the two and argue from one to the other, without falling into

serious error, both in the interpretation of history and in the practical proposals we advocate. It is easy to show that individual suffering has again and again been incidental to the progress of society, and we may, if we choose, fix our eyes so earnestly on the individual suffering as to ignore the national progress. On the other hand, it is well to remember that what makes for the comfort of the masses in the present generation does not necessarily result in the material welfare of posterity in the long run. There are two points of view which must always be distinguished in our minds: the good of society on the one hand, and the welfare of the individuals who compose society on the other. While this distinction needs to be drawn even from an economic point of view, it is still more important to keep it in mind when we try to take account of culture and character and other elements in human welfare. Nor have we, in a progressive society, any fixed or definite standard by which we can judge of improvement, either in society as a whole or in individuals. We have not attained a goal from which to judge aright of each step in advance; we are only looking on at a process. We may, however, see that the national life and individual lives are closely interconnected and act and react on each other. The 1 Hammond, The Village Labourer, p. 26.

advance of society opens up more possibilities for individuals; and the individuals, who make the most of the opportunities that are open to them, are helping to secure each position that is gained, and are pioneers in social progress.

VI

HUMANITARIANISM AND COERCION

I. THE ABANDONMENT OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE

Ir had been generally held during the Middle Ages, and in the seventeenth century, that the man who thought only of his private interest was a positive danger to the community; but during the eighteenth century a remarkable change may be observed, at all events so far as material prosperity is concerned. At the beginning of the century according to current opinion the force of selfinterest was one that might be guided and controlled so as to work for the common good, and Parliament busied itself in the effort to bring private interests into harmony with that of the public. But as time passed, it came to be more and more recognised that State interference was not really as necessary as had been supposed for the promotion of public interests, and an era began when it was held that government would do most for the material prosperity of the country by leaving private interests alone. Adam Smith had reached this conclusion as a matter of practical experience, and from an examination of the

expedients by which statesmen had endeavoured to build up the material prosperity of Great Britain, while French economists expounded a similar doctrine as a philosophical principle. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, educated opinion in Great Britain accepted the principle of laissez-faire with confidence; men were inclined to believe that the way in which Parliament could do most for social reform was by abolishing the restrictions which had been imposed in less enlightened times. It was in this spirit that the Elizabethan arrangements for industrial training by means of apprenticeship and for regulating the rates of wages were swept away as anachronisms and absurdities. The present generation, after a century of laissez-faire, takes a different view of some of the institutions that were then abolished and does not regard them as either unnecessary or prejudicial.

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century there were, however, signs of a reaction, and it came to be generally recognised that State interference might be desirable in exceptional cases. Two causes contributed to this result, and so weakened the hold which laissez-faire had established on the public mind. First, philanthropists were conscious that their efforts to relieve distress were spasmodic and irregular; they felt that