LAW IN POLITICS. 401 



tion — to bring home to the national understanding 

 the economic error of the old commercial systems ; 

 so also as regards the grievous results of unre- 

 stricted competition in human labour, our only 

 effective teaching has been that of hard expe- 

 rience. The doctrines of Adam Smith, when 

 applied here, were a hindrance and not a help. 

 The Political Economists were, almost to a man, 

 hostile to restrictive legislation. They did not 

 see what would be the working of Natural Law 

 upon the Human Will, when that Will was ex- 

 posed to overpowering motives under debased 

 conditions of understanding, and of heart. They 

 did not see the higher Law which Parliament 

 was asserting when it was driven by sheer in- 

 stinctive horror of actual results, to prohibit "free" 

 labourers from disposing as they pleased of the 

 labour of their children. 



To this hour the principle on which this great 

 counter- movement rests as regards our ideas 

 of the legitimate province of Legislation, has 

 never been philosophically treated. The Laws 

 on which it depends, and which it does but re- 

 cognise, have never been scientifically defined. 



2 c 



