less general; and these laws, when divested of metaphysical wrappings, resolve themselves into probabilities that certain consequences will follow from certain conjunctions of antecedents. Obviously, at whatever end the legislator aims, he must consult all those sciences whose probabilities bear upon this end. If, for instance, the matter under consideration be colliery explosions, supposed to arise from the firing of shots or blasts, there is -(1) the probability that the blasting is really the cause of the explosion; (2) the probability that more efficient ventilation would render the blasting harmless; (3) that if gunpowder were prohibited, compressed air or some other agent would be brought into successful operation ; (4) that if blasting were confined to the night time, the mines could still be worked; and so forth, until we come finally to the probability that if the mines in question were actually thrown out of use, more harm than good would result. The legislator must look at such questions in an all-round manner. He is neither chemist, nor physicist, nor physician, nor economist, nor moralist, but all of these in some degree, and something more as well, in the sense that he must gather to a focus the complex calculus of probabilities, the data of which are supplied by the separate investigators. The Minister of State, as it is said, acts "upon advice." It is impossible that he should read up all the text-books of the sciences concerned, but he takes from the most reliable professors of each branch of science their inferences as bearing directly upon the matter. Here evidently we meet the reason why so few men of science are legislators, and so few legislators are men of science. The occupations are almost incompatible. The profound

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man of science must restrict his purview, whereas the legislator must be equally open to truth-that is to say, probability, from whatever quarter it comes. And although the legislator in matters of trade has perhaps more to do with economics than with any other science, yet on this very account he may need the more caution, lest he attribute exclusive value to the economic probabilities, and overlook moral, sanitary, political, and other probabilities.

Complications of the Subject. After the preceding general remarks on the principles of legislation in matters of industry, we may proceed to consider how far certain of the more important or imminent questions may be treated on those principles. Industrial legislation is, indeed, of such extent and complication of detail that we cannot do more in the available space than select typical The subject would be comparatively simple were we concerned only with the direct relations of the State to individuals. Even in this respect there is complication enough, when we remember the vast variety of trades which have to be considered, and the fourfold classes of persons to be legislated for in various degrees and manners—namely, men, women, young persons, and children.

cases.

In reality, however, the most difficult questions arise not from the relations of the State to individuals, but from its relations to aggregates and organisations of individuals. After all, the State may perhaps be described, with a little pardonable hyperbole, as the least of the powers which govern us. Law is but the consecration of custom and public opinion. Whether in

the home, the school, the workshop, or the public meeting, we are really governed by an indefinite amount of common law. More especially is this the case in the factory and the exchange. Men of the same trade cannot meet together without entering into some kind of combination, tending to govern its constituents and to affect the interests of outsiders. Industrial society is, and always has been, more or less honeycombed with cliques and corners and cabals, each with its own ideas of private interest, and its own code of right and wrong. As we shall presently see, trade societies or gilds are among the oldest institutions of which we have any historical information, and they doubtless existed long before their existence came to be recorded.

The relation of the State to labour is a question not so much of the direct restraint of the labourer by the State as of the manner in which the State can regard the voluntary and unauthorised legislation of the labourers themselves. It may be that the work of the State will consist in increasing rather than lessening the liberty of the individual workman. In any case, it is impossible to treat of industrial legislation without fully taking into account the rules and restraints under which labour exists. We shall, however, best approach the difficulties of the subject by considering in the first place the modes and degrees in which it is expedient for the State to control labour directly. We shall then have some clue to the question, how far individuals are justified in attempting to control their fellow-workmen. Next there arises the higher question, how far the State ought to control individuals in their attempts at controlling each other. Even when we can clearly perceive

that the action of a "corner" or a trades union is pernicious, it does not necessarily follow that the State would do well to intervene. In some cases evils are best left to work their own remedy; in other cases attempted intervention would only aggravate the evil. There are often, moreover, several ways of approaching the same end in some cases an institution may need to be summarily suppressed; in other cases it may be allowed to show its own worthlessness and futility; in yet other cases rival institutions may be set up to undermine and counteract that which is deemed pernicious; occasionally, instead of trying to suppress the obnoxious institution, it may be favoured and promoted, in the hope that the good which is in it may grow and the evil die away; nor is this at all an exhaustive statement of the many indirect ways in which legislation may be brought to bear upon an industrial problem. Not uncommonly we may hesitate between the several ways, and perhaps wait for further experience to indicate the best method of setting to work. If we only have carefully-recorded information about it, every institution may be regarded as an experiment tending to show its own success or non-success.

CHAPTER II.

DIRECT INTERFERENCE OF THE STATE WITH LABOUR.

THE manner, occasion, and degree in which the State may interfere with the industrial freedom of its citizens is one of the most debatable and difficult questions of social science. Existing legislation, which all allow to be necessary, obliges us on the one hand to look upon such interference as justifiable in certain circumstances; more general considerations lead us to look upon freedom as the normal state. There is a wide intervening tract, where the line of demarcation is very differently drawn by different thinkers. The question arises, moreover, whether the matter is not one which must be decided according to circumstance of time, place, history, and national character.

It might perhaps be expected that we could learn a good deal about labour legislation from the English Statute Book, which now covers in almost unbroken continuity an interval of 650 years. There is no want of such legislation in that great book; in fact, there is over-abundance, and we may learn something from the failure and futility of much that has been enacted by English Parliaments. But the great lesson which we learn, and it is an impressive one, is that legislation with

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