726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is said that, when railways were first opened in Spain, peasants 

 standing on the tracks were not unfrequently run over, and that the 

 blame fell on the engine-drivers for not stopping, rural experiences 

 having yielded no conception of the momentum of a large mass mov- 

 ing at a high velocity. 



The incident is recalled to me on contemplating the ideas of the 

 so-called " practical " politician, into whose mind there enters no 

 thought of such a thing as political momentum, still less of a political 

 momentum which, instead of diminishing or remaining constant, in- 

 creases. The theory on which he daily proceeds is that the change 

 caused by his measure will stop where he intends it to stop. He con- 

 templates intently the things his act will achieve, but thinks little of 

 the remoter issues of the movement his act sets up, and still less its 

 collateral issues. When, in war-time, " food for powder " was to be 

 provided by encouraging population — when Mr. Pitt said, "Let us 

 make relief in cases where there are a number of children a matter of 

 right and honor, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt " * — 

 it was not expected that the poor-rates would be quadrupled in fifty 

 years, that women with many bastards would be preferred as wives to 

 modest women because of their incomes from the parish, and that hosts 

 of rate-payers would be pulled down into the ranks of pauperism. 

 Legislators who in 1833 voted £20,000 a year to aid in building school- 

 houses never supposed that the step they then took would lead to 

 forced contributions, local and general, now amounting to £6,000,000 ; 

 they did not intend to establish the principle that A should be made 

 responsible for educating B's offspring ; they did not dream of a com- 

 pulsion which should deprive poor widows of the help of their elder 

 children ; and still less did they dream that their successors, by requir- 

 ing impoverished parents to apply to boards of guardians to pay the 

 fees which school-boards would not remit, would initiate a habit of 

 applying to boards of guardians and so cause pauperization.! Neither 

 did those who in 1834 passed an act regulating the labor of women 

 and children in certain factories imagine that the system they were 

 beginning would end in the restriction and inspection of labor in all 

 kinds of producing establishments where more than fifty people are 

 employed ; nor did they conceive that the inspection provided would 

 grow to the extent of requiring that, before a " young person " is em- 

 ployed in a factory, authority must be given by a certifying surgeon, 

 who, by personal examination (to which no limit is placed), has satis- 

 fied himself that there is no incapacitating disease or bodily infirmity, 

 his verdict determining whether the " young person " shall earn wages 

 or not. J Even less, as I say, does the politician who plumes himself 

 on the practicalness of his aims conceive the indirect results that will 



* Hansard's "Parliamentary History," xxxii, p. 710. 



f "Fortnightly Review," January, 1884, p. 17. 



X " Factories and Workshops Act," 41 and 42 Victoria, cap. 16. 



