LAW IN POLITICS. 367 



No more signal illustration has been ever given 

 of the relation between Natural Law and Human 

 Law — of the circumstances in which Natural Law 

 may be trusted, and of those in which it absolutely 

 requires to be controlled, than the illustration 

 afforded by the history of Legislation in our own 

 country within the present century. During that 

 period two great discoveries have been made in the 

 Science of Government : the one is the immense 

 advantage of abolishing restrictions upon Trade ; 

 the other is the absolute necessity of imposing 

 restrictions upon Labour. The rise, the growth, 

 and the final acceptance of these two ideas as the 

 basis of practical Legislation, is a history so curi- 

 ous, and having such close relation to the subject 

 of this chapter, that I propose to deal with it 

 somewhat in detail. 



Since the dissolution of the Greek and Roman 

 Commonwealths, no nation has acted on the one 

 great error of all the ancient systems of political 

 philosophy — that the natural desire of men for 

 the accumulation of wealth is an evil to be dreaded 

 and repressed. So far as this goes there is a 

 sharp and striking contrast between the spirit of 



