126 THE MORAL ASPECT OF 



raise the personal efficiency of the people rather than by 

 changing the conditions of trade. They have suggested 

 better public education, especially on the technical side, 

 and they have called for social reforms which shall make 

 our lives less wasteful and more sober and simple. But 

 their words have fallen flat upon the national ear, and the 

 remedies which they have proposed have seemed stale, 

 commonplace, practically insignificant and negligible. As 

 a people, we have been behaving precisely as if moral 

 considerations were either too remote, or too irrelevant 

 and slight, to have any practical bearing in determining 

 the method of averting the decline or securing the progress 

 of the nation as a producer and distributor of wealth. We 

 have puzzled over the increase and decrease, relative or 

 absolute, of our exports and imports ; we have traced 

 economic causes and effects ; we have accumulated statis- 

 tics, true and false, just as if human qualities did not 

 count, and as if the problem from beginning to end were 

 purely material. And, of course, our diagnosis has dic- 

 tated the remedy ; the terms in which the problem has 

 been stated have determined the character of the solu- 

 tion. 



Now, when we turn from the business of the nation to 

 our own, we see and recognise the value of these human 

 qualities clearly enough, I mean their purely economical 

 value. What sum, for instance, would one of the great 

 Clyde shipbuilders, harassed by the ignorance, the stupid- 

 ity, the intemperance, the irregularity, and the untrust- 

 worthiness of the workmen in his employment, who keep 

 his machinery idle, dislocate his plans, and frustrate his 

 contracts, be willing to pay in hard cash for some magic 

 invention, legislative or other, which secured for him, and 



