public, especially the working-class public, would suffer. Judging from their present habits of shopping up to ten o'clock at night, and twelve o'clock on Saturday nights, they would suffer. It can hardly, indeed, be supposed that anybody is driven by necessity to buy clothes, furniture, and other permanent articles, after eight o'clock. The case may be somewhat different with food, tobacco, drinks, and other matters of immediate need. Some doubt may arise as to whether the brightly-lighted streets of a poor neighbourhood do not really form the promenade ground of those who have few pleasures to relieve the dull monotonous round of a laborious life. To those who live in crowded dirty lodgings unsavoury streets may be a breathing - place, and the well-filled shop windows the only available museum of science and art. Much care and discrimination would obviously be needed, and a legislator might find the question almost as thorny as that of public-house closing and the bona fide traveller. In any case, it is necessary to approach the question tentatively and gradually. The experiment might, moreover, be tried at first in such separate towns as should present strong petitions in favour of it; but to prevent unfair competition the law should apply to the whole of a town, if to any part. The regulation might even be carried out by special clauses in local Acts of Parliament, in the same way that the municipal authorities of Manchester and Liverpool are endeavouring to remedy the great abuse of young children trading in the streets at night. Such special legislation no doubt needs to be watched, but when properly watched presents the best method of gaining experience. It amounts, in fact, to experimental legislation.

Agricultural Labour.-Very little can be said in this book on the subject of agricultural labourers. The "hind," as he now exists in the rural parts of England, is mainly the result of the Land Laws and the Poor Laws, subjects of great extent and importance which have little affinity with the special topic of this essay, and are treated in other volumes of the same series. In former centuries the agricultural labourer, in common with all other labourers, came within the scope of the Statute of Labourers, the Statute of Apprentices, and other similar laws; but since such kind of legislation became obsolete, the real peasant, so far as he has been allowed to exist at all, has not been vexed with much legislation. Even the Truck Act, as we have seen, does not apply to him. A family living on their ancestral farm, and cultivating it with their united labour, represent so natural and healthy a condition of life that little or no interference of the State is needed. But bad laws, especially bad Poor Laws, not to speak of bad Game Laws, have in England caused the peasant to diverge sadly from this state of things. The laws of pauper settlement led to the general destruction of labourers' cottages wherever they could possibly be destroyed. The labourers were obliged to crowd together in the nearest village or town. Hence, whenever much labour was needed for the cultivation of root and other special crops, gangs of men, boys, women, and children, had to be employed, in a manner giving rise to scandalous results. As it was impossible all at once to reverse the course of events which led to these abuses, the only resource was to regulate agricultural gangs, a work attempted in the 30 and 31 Vict. cap. 130. This Act

provided that every person acting as gang-master should previously obtain a license from the justices, on proof that he was a person of good character, and fit to be trusted with the control of a gang. No child under eight years of age was to be employed; no females were to work in the same gang as men; and, when females were employed, a licensed female gang-mistress was to be present. From the first the Act was to a great extent evaded or disregarded. Although penalties were imposed upon every breach of the Act, no machinery of inspection or prosecution was provided; it was nobody's business to see that the Act was observed, and it was therefore not observed.

Shortly after the passing of this Act were published the elaborate inquiries of the Commission appointed in 1867 to investigate the employment of children, young persons, and women, in agriculture.1 The facts brought to light showed abundant scope for State interference, but no useful results have followed except as regards the compulsory education of agricultural children. This was specially provided for by the Agricultural Children Act, 1873 (36 and 37 Vict. cap. 67), which, however, was repealed for no very clear reason by the Elementary Education Act of 1876, the provisions of which were substituted. But section 16 of the Agricultural Children Act had already repealed so much of the fourth section of the Agricultural Gangs Act as related to children, and this repeal holds good. It seems to follow that the remainder of this fourth section, relating to mixed gangs and female gang-mistresses, probably entirely inoperative, together with the provisions of the Elementary Educa1 Parliamentary Papers, 1867-8 [4068 and i.], 1868-9 [4202 and i.]

tion Acts, forms practically the sum total of direct restrictive legislation now applying to agriculture. Here is a wonderful contrast to the elaborate regulations of the factory, workshop, shipping, coal mines, metalliferous mines, and other Acts relating to the various branches of manufacturing and commercial industry. It would lead us too far to inquire whether this absence of legislative restriction is due to its needlessness, or to the unwillingness of landowning legislators to touch the interests of their own order.

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HAVING now considered the application of the principles of industrial legislation as manifested in the direct interference of the State, we have yet the larger and more. difficult part of the subject before us. Individuals are in the habit of interfering with their neighbours' affairs, and in the case of trade and industry such interference has from early times assumed a decided form. Common trade interest is one of the strongest and most frequent bonds of society, and, judged by the light of history, is likely always to be a considerable factor in social affairs. It leads to the creation of secret or open confederacies attempting to control not only their own members, but all whose actions touch the trade interest. Imperia in imperio are continually growing up, and, under the guise or name of gilds, fraternities, colleges, corporations, friendly societies, trades unions, institutes or associations of various titles assume a right of government. It thus becomes a highly important and difficult question for the State to decide how such bodies can be treated. The State in controlling the individual must, of course, control his control over other individuals, where that