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ical forces is continually to aggravate the disadvantages from which any person or class may suffer. The fact of being worsted in one conflict is an ill preparative for another encounter. Every gain which one party makes at the expense of another, furnishes the sinews of war for further aggressions; every loss which one person or class. of persons sustains in the competitions of industry, weakens the capability for future resistance. This principle applies with increasing force as men sink in the industrial scale. Emphatically is it true that the curse of the poor is their poverty. Cheated in quantity, quality and price 1 in whatever they purchase, they are notoriously unable to get as much, proportionally, for their little, as the rich for their larger means. Economically speaking, this must ever remain true, and operate with increasing power Moral forces may indeed enter to restore the equilibrium ; the liberality of nature may afford to the weaker class a margin sufficient for them to long maintain themselves; the discovery of new arts and new resources may open up fresh opportunities for retrieving loss; but, through all, it cannot be controverted that the tendency of purely economical forces is to widen the differences existing in the constitution of industrial society, and to subject any and every person and class of persons who may, from any cause, be at disadvantage in respect to selling his or their service or product, to a constantly increasing burden.

3. Progress toward freedom is not necessarily accomplished by indiscriminately throwing off restraints, either in the political or the industrial 2 body. True, men

1 Count Rumford's Essays contain much interesting matter in illustration of the losses which the working classes suffer in the domestic use of what they have purchased, from the want of simple and elementary apparatus for cooking, storing, etc.

2 Thus, I cannot hesitate to assent to the opinion of M. Say, that the breaking down of all the fraternities in Paris, after the Revolution of 1830, and the sudden rush, without order or discretion, of a mob of

only learn to swim by going into the water; only make their eyes of use by going into the light; but, out of regard to human weakness, exposure to either element should be conducted with measure, and in order. While progress toward freedom is to be made by the removal of industrial restrictions, it does not follow that the removal of any specific restriction at any given time, conduces to such progress. The restriction may be, in the situation existing, correspondent to an infirmity which cannot so summarily be done away. A crutch operates by restraint only; but it is a restraint which prevents a lame man from falling to the ground, whence he might have no strength to raise himself again; while, if artificially sustained, he may be able to achieve a very considerable freedom of movement and of action. A law prohibiting a child under eight years to work in a factory, operates by restraint only; but it is a restraint upon parental folly or greed, which may prevent a horrible waste of physical force, and cause a larger amount of actual labor to be accomplished during the entire term of life, than would be effected were the child to be stunted by premature exposure and hardship. For this reason I believe, with Mr. Horner, that "the interposition of the legislature in behalf of children, is justified by the most cold and severe principles of political economy." 1

labor into trades immemorially restricted, was the cause of great disaster in 1831; that it would have been better, both for the trades and for the mass of outside labor, had the barriers been removed more gradually.

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Employment of children in factories," p. 15. Mr. Horner, who was government inspector of factories, states that in the lace mills of Nottingham, children, 9 to 15 years of age, were frequently employed 20 hours on a stretch, from 4 A.M. to 12 at night. [p. 14.] He quotes a witness who testified that "being frequently detained in his countinghouse late at night, till 12 or 1 o'clock, he has often, in going home, in the depth of winter, met mothers taking their children to the neighboring print-works, the children crying." [p. 123.]

Dr. Villermé, in his memorable report to the French Academy

Just how much force, on purely economical principles, has the objection urged against many proposed measures, that they are in violation of the freedom of contract? Let us candidly but searchingly consider this question. What is the authority of laissez faire1 when levelled against a factory act, or a proposition to restrain truck? Laws in restraint of trade, or interfering with the times and methods of employment, with wages and prices, are not mischievous because they violate a theoretical self-sufficiency of labor, but because they effect a certain actual result. What is that result? They diminish mobility, which, as we have seen, is the prime condition of competition, while competition affords the only security the laborer can have that he will get the utmost possible for his service. The mischief of such laws is simply and solely that they are obstructive. Here, then, and not in the shibboleth, laissez faire, laissez passer, we have the true test of the expediency of a proposed regulation of industry or trade. Does it practically obstruct movement? used the following language in writing of the factory laborers of Alsace : The rents in the manufacturing towns and villages immediately adjoining, are so high that they are often obliged to live at the distance of a league and even a league and a half. The poor children, many of whom are scarcely seven years old, and some even younger, have to take from their sleep and their meal-hours, whatever is required to traverse that long and weary road, in the morning to get to the factory, in the evening to get home. To judge how excessive is the labor of children in the factories, one has only to recollect that it is unlawful to employ galley-slaves more than 12 hours a day, and these 12 must be broken by two hours for meals, reducing the actual labor to ten hours a day; while the young people of whom I speak have to toil 13 hours, and sometimes 131⁄2, independent of their meal times." "So understood, I hold it to be a pretentious sophism, destitute of foundation in nature and fact, and rapidly becoming an obstruction and nuisance in public affairs."-J. E. Cairnes' Essays in Pol. Econ., p. 252.

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But is it said every restriction or regulation is in some degree, obstructive? Right and wrong, at once. Restriction and regulation are obstructive as against a pre-existing condition of perfect practical freedom. But perfect freedom obtains in nothing human. There are obstructions on every hand, not physical only, but also intellectual and moral. May not a regulative act well conceived to remove certain moral and intellectual obstacles to free action, have the effect to promote, not retard, industrial movement?

For instance: take the transfer of real estate. An act for the registration of ownership is restrictive upon transfers; yet can any one doubt that judicious provisions for registration, instead of retarding transfers of land and buildings, do in fact, in the most important degree, promote them? The compliance with the requirement of registration is indeed, in itself, an obstruction: it involves a certain expenditure of labor and money; a few shillings and an hour's time. But it gives every possible buyer such an assurance as to his title and the history of the property, as constitutes an intellectual and moral help in the acquisition of estates, of the greatest effectiveness.1 For it should be borne in mind, in all discussions relating to the exchange and distribution of wealth, that fear, ignorance, superstition and custom are as truly obstructive as are rivers and mountains; and if a registrative provision gives certainty and clearness, where before was doubt and apprehension, or utter ignorance, it may pay a thousand times over, for the nominal hindrance to action which is involved in a formal compliance with its requirements.

It is difficult to see how perfect freedom becomes the condition of economical, any more than it is of political, security and advancement. Why should not the throwing-off of economical restrictions among a people long

1 In England, the absence of a system of registering titles has bur dened the transfer of estates most oppressively.

abused and deeply abased, be accomplished with the same caution, and the same regard for the order of things, as the social and political emancipation and enfranchisement of oppressed masses? Yet we find writers who would ridicule the notion that one form of government is equally good for all peoples, or that any form of government could be good for any people, which had not respect to national peculiarities of character and structure; who hold that no people long degraded can safely be raised at once to political freedom; and even insist that among a people long habituated to universal suffrage, and with traditions of self-rule extending through centuries, stringent limitations should be imposed on the popular will: we find, I say, these writers declaring for the removal of all restrictions throughout industrial society, even such as are of a regulative character merely, not only without regard to the habits or condition of the people, but equally without regard to the order in which such restrictions should be removed.

For myself, I am utterly at a loss to conceive how such reasoners, some of whom are conservatives and pessimists of the deepest dye in politics, justify their optimistic radicalism in industry. Certainly, if, as Chevalier, the great apostle of free trade in France, has said, Political Economy and politics rest on the same principles, 1 there would seem to be as much virtue in judicious and disinterested restraint in labor, as in government or society. Nowhere has restraint any positive virtue; no life or healing comes. out of it; but grave evils may be suppressed; great waste and mischief prevented by it.

But while I hold that discretion and order should be observed in throwing off social, political and economical restrictions, alike, I hold this in no desponding or distrust

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'L'économie politique s'appuie sur les memes principes que la politique.”—8th Discours d'ouverture de l'année, 1847–8.