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 13%, 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.

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, 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

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

ful vein. I believe that society and industry may unload rapidly, if in due order; that there is something in the very name of liberty to which the heart of man, in whatever condition, responds; and that men who believe in freedom are the safest guides in directing the progress of a people toward perfect freedom. I do not say that progress should be made slowly; but that it should be made by steps, by due gradation-and with something of preparation for each successive stage of the advance.

What then is the problem of Distribution?

We have seen that so far as differences exist in respect to the ability and opportunities of the several classes of industrial society to resort swiftly and surely to the best market, such difference must put at an economical disadvantage the class suffering the greatest relative obstruction, and confer corresponding advantages at their expense, upon the class or classes more favorably situated and better endowed. We have seen, moreover, that such disadvantages, be they great or small, at the outset, are cumulative; that the word "to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even the little that he seemeth to have," is a law of universal operation and a very unharmonizing tendency; that economical forces, thus, instead of bringing redress, tend to crowd further down the classes who enter the struggle weakest.

If, then, the political economist finds the obstructions besetting the resort to the best market, existing in the present condition of industrial society, to be, in fact, serious, is he not bound to abandon a rule of conduct based on the assumption of a competition so general that it may for practical purposes be deemed universal, and to study critically the condition of the several classes of persons making claims on the product of industry with a view to ascertain what help

can be brought from the outside, in the absence of any reparative virtue in industrial causes, to supply the deficiencies of competition Failing to find relief in economical forces, he will look away to moral forces to achieve the emancipation of the economically oppressed classes, not by taking them out from under the operation of economical laws, for that is impossible, but by providing the conditions (intelligence, frugality and sobriety, political franchises and social ambitions) which will secure that mobility, that easy, quick and sure resort to market, which alone is needed to give scope and sway to the beneficent agencies of competition. Fortunately he may look with confidence to see this amelioration coincide with a continued increase in the productive power of labor, due to fresh advances in the arts and sciences, which will facilitate the upward movement.

Meanwhile the question whether any specific legislation in protection of the working classes (say, a factory act), or any measure of regulation and restraint adopted by an industrial class for their own benefit (say, a trades union rule), is likely to promote the desired object, should be treated, I suggest, on the following principle. Remembering that the one thing to be secured for the right distribution of wealth, is perfect competition, it should be inquired, whether that act or measure will, all things considered, on the whole and in the long run, increase or diminish the substantial, not the nominal, freedom of movement. If the effect would be to quicken the resort to market, then, no matter how far restrictive in form, it must be approved. But in considering the probable tendencies of such acts or measures, we should bear in mind how great are the liabilities to error and corruption in legislation; how certain is the administration of the law to fall short of its intent; how much better most results are reached through social than through legal pressure; how destitute of all positive virtue, all healing efficacy, is restraint, its only