LAW IN POLITICS. 389 



slightest check on the accumulations of the 

 Warehouse. But the opposition was not in the 

 main due either to selfishness or indifference. 

 False intellectual conceptions — false views both 

 of principle and of fact — were its real foun- 

 dation. Some of the ablest men in Parlia- 

 ment, who were wholly unaffected by any 

 bias of personal interest, declared that nothing 

 would induce them to interfere with the labour 

 which they called " free." Had not the working 

 classes a right to employ their children as they 

 pleased ? Who were better able to judge 

 than fathers and mothers of the capacities 

 of their children ? Why interfere for the pro- 

 tection of those who already had the best and 

 most natural of all protections ? Such were 

 some of the arguments against interfering with 

 free labour. 



Now in what sense was this labour free ? It 

 was free from legal compulsion — that is to say, 

 it was free from that kind of compulsion which 

 arises out of the public Will of the whole com- 

 munity imposed by authority upon the conduct 

 of individuals. But there was another kind of 



