68 A. D. GODLEY 



guidance, at any rate. As usually happens at 

 the beginning of a controversy, the issues were 

 presented rather crudely, and, in some cases, 

 over-polemically ; compromise, not war, was 

 the deciding method later. Some of the sug- 

 gestions have since been adopted; others have 

 been tried and found wanting. All the ques- 

 tions raised have been fully and freely dis- 

 cussed, and not much is to be gained by going 

 back to their earliest inception. 



But one may say parenthetically that this 

 earliest phase of a long controversy has a cer- 

 tain historical interest. It illustrates the ad- 

 mirable optimism of the nineteenth century, 

 more especially that part of it in England 

 which is usually described as the heyday of 

 liberalism. Something or other was always 

 going to be a panacea in those days : something 

 or other, provided always it could be credited 

 to English liberalism, was always going to 

 bring the millennium, that millennium which 

 nowadays only politicians promise us, and 

 that only because it is part of a politician's 

 business. The 1851 exhibition was going to do 

 it; free competition and "laisser faire" was 



