396 the reign of law. 



instincts will take no heed whatever, and for the 

 attainment of which, if they are to be attained 

 at all, the higher faculties of our nature must 

 impose their Will in authoritative expressions of 

 Human Law. In all that wide circle of operations 

 which have for their immediate result the getting 

 of wealth, there is a sagacity and a cunning in 

 the instincts of labour and in the love of gain 

 compared with which all legislative wisdom is 

 ignorance and folly. But the instincts of labour, 

 having for their conscious purpose the acquisition 

 of wealth, are instincts which, under the stimulus 

 and necessities of modern society, are blind to all 

 other results whatever. They override even the 

 love of life ; they silence even the fear of death. 

 Trades in which the labourers never reach beyond 

 middle life — trades in which the work is uniformly 

 fatal within a few years — trades in which those 

 who follow them are liable to loathsome and 

 torturing disease — all are filled by the enlist- 

 ment of an unfailing series of recruits. If, there- 

 fore, there be some things desirable or need- 

 ful for a Community other than the acquisition 

 of wealth, — if mental ignorance, and physical 





