TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 743 



scope and object of their political sj-stem the assurance to every man of ' liberty 

 and the pursuit of happiness.' If this be so, the 'unorthodox' economist of the 

 present day will have to admit to liimself that he has to address himself to the 

 problem declared in a well-known passage of Carlyle ^ to be insoluble by ' the 

 whole finance ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern Europe in 

 joint stocli company, to make one shoeblack happy.' Nor will the disciples of the 

 school of Humanity go far beyond us in declaring that ' we uphold as the true key- 

 note of social reorganisation in the future the insisting on the moral law as supreme 

 and paramount to interest.'- 



Our responsibilities are great, if our studies and labours are anything more than 

 philosophic speculations, anything better than an Epicurean survey of causes and 

 effects, which we are altogether powerless to direct or to influence. As we con- 

 template the changes that have taken place in the material conditions of man's life 

 all over the civilised world during the past century, or in our own country duriug 

 the period of fifty years, whose approaching completion luider the sway of our 

 Sovereign is giving a text to so many themes of self-gratulation, this responsibility 

 is constantly forced on our attention. Has this vast increase of population, con- 

 comitant with a still more astonishing and ample store of the means of sustenance 

 and of the collective wealth, been accompanied by an improvement in the 

 average well-being of the individual ? And if we are able to answer this 

 question in the affirmative, and to justify our answer by figures, so far as figures 

 will enable us to do so, can we claim that this general improvement is due 

 in any degree to our right appreciation of economic laws, and to the right 

 application of human control to them, so far as human agency is competent to 

 interfere in their operation ? Or has this progress been brought about by causes 

 which we are impotent to control, and which it is therefore useless to examine ? 

 Or, on the other hand, is this apparent progress entirely illusory ? is it true that the 

 type must deteriorate in proportion as the individual multiplies? and must we 

 admit that our researches have been either labour misapplied, or that they have been 

 powerless to arrest the movement on the downward slope ? These are questions 

 to which it is not easy to give any answer that shall be beyond cavil or criticism, 

 but they are always before us, and we may not decline to face their consideration. 

 Most notably do they jiress themselves on our attention in such a place as 

 Birmingham. Our overgrown inorganic metropolis is a thing apart, without 

 cohesion or entity, not comparable with any other social unit ; our large cities still 

 have a life and individuality of their own. When we contemplate our busy ports, 

 our fleets of ships, and the vast mass of foreign materials which a network of rail- 

 ways distributes to inland centres of manufacture ; when we view the swarming 

 streets, the splendid buildings, and teeming industrial population of such a city as 

 Birmingham, we may point to evidence of material prosperity that cannot be gainsaid, 

 and may challenge comparison in this respect with the world. But we pay a penalty 

 for all this in a shape which is no less constantly forced on our notice ; crowded lanes, 

 noisome alleys, insanitary dwellings, stunted and unhealthy men and women, 

 sickly children, bread hardly won by labour in factories or at occupations that no 

 legislative interference can render wholly innoxious. ' The evils and the diminished 

 vitality that are caused by poverty, crime, personal uncleanliness, drink, and excess 

 of all kinds, as also by the close agglomeration of human beings in places that ofier 

 the best chance of lucrative employment, and especially by the unhealthiness of 

 certain occupations, are such as can at best be mitigated by the sanitary authorities, 

 and often lie entirely outside their power of interference.' ^ Hence arise misery and 

 poverty, and thence discontent, contrasts between luxury or ease, and poverty or 

 want. Hence, again, conflicts between capital and labour — a worse than civil, a 

 fratricidal strife — between forces whose co-operation is essential to success, and 

 an inclination to apply legislative remedies at every turn to each evil that strikes 

 the imagination or the eye. 



' Sartor Sesartus, Book ii. ch. ix. 

 - Mr. Frederic Harrison, Times, May 31, 1886. 



' Supplement to Report of Registrar- General, 188.5, Introduction p. xvii ; see also 

 Report of Chief Inspector of Factories, ^-c, 1885, pp. 18-23. 



