LAW IN POLITICS. 415 



through poverty and ignorance, and often through 

 much suffering, — have been able to do little more 

 than strike blindly against evils whose pressure 

 they could feel, but whose root and remedy they 

 could neither see nor understand ? 



Accordingly, the history of Combination among 

 the Working Classes has, until a very recent 

 period, been a sad history of misdirected effort — of 

 strength put forth only in violence and disorder, 

 and of the virtues o( Brotherhood lost in tyran- 

 nical suppression of all individual freedom. Its 

 heaviest blows have been often aimed at the most 

 powerful agencies for good. One of the very 

 earliest forms of Combination has been that which 

 was directed against the introduction and improve- 

 ments of machinery. The Working Classes have 

 always encountered with jealousy and fear those 

 triumphs of Mechanical Invention whose function it 

 is to economise labour, and to multiply the fruits 

 of industry. It would be hard to blame them. 

 What class is there which can say with truth that 

 they have themselves been able always to follow 

 with intelligent foresight the links of Natural Con- 

 sequence through the darkness into which they 



