particular trade. Here we have the essential conflict Lecture between individualism and collectivism.

The changed attitude of the working men facilitated the alliance between the artisans and men of the middle class who, on whatever ground, dissented from Benthamite liberalism.

Chartism had been discredited by the fact that some Chartists sought to attain their ends by the employment or menace of physical force.1 Trade unionism had during its "revolutionary period" been linked with chartism, and had by acts of violence, and by the use of threatening language, secret oaths, and all the paraphernalia of revolution and conspiracy, excited the opposition of all persons who valued the maintenance of law and order. But between 1848 and 1868 unionism came under the guidance of capable, and, from their own

1 In 1848 popular leaders and their opponents were the victims of a delusion fostered by the traditions of the French Revolution. Insurgents, it was supposed, were able to defeat disciplined troops. This notion rested in the main upon the successes achieved during the great Revolution, and again in 1830 and 1848 by the mob of Paris. No idea which has obtained general currency was ever less justified by fact. The belief in the mysterious force of popular enthusiasm was nothing better than a superstition. On no one occasion during the whole revolutionary history of France from 1789 up to the present day, have disciplined troops, when properly led, been defeated by insurgents. Nor has the army shown any special disposition to join the people. On this matter the events of 1848 and 1871 are decisive. In June 1848 the insurgents had every advantage, they had been arming for weeks, they fought with great enthusiasm, and they fought behind well-constructed barricades. Their opponents were to a great extent National Guards and the Garde Mobile, raised from the poorer classes of Paris, on whose absolute fidelity it was difficult to count. Yet the forces of insur

rection were vanquished. In 1871 the troops employed by the Government were many of them men who had been vanquished in war. Among the defenders of the Commune there were many trained soldiers. Victory remained with the army.

2 See Lord Londonderry's Manifesto, Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 150.

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Lecture point of view, moderate leaders. The abandonment, therefore, of the Charter, combined with the changed character of unionism made it possible for men who were opposed to all violence or revolution to enter into an alliance with the artisans, or at any rate to sympathise with their policy. When young England came under the guidance of Mr. Disraeli, Tories could afford at times to exhibit sentimental friendliness towards workmen engaged in conflict with manufacturers whose mills offended the æsthetic taste, and whose radicalism shook the political authority of benevolent aristocrats. Among young men, again, who though not Tories, dissented from the social and economic dogmas of utilitarianism, working men found lawyers willing and able to suggest changes in the law of the land fitted for the attainment of the ends aimed at by unionists.2

Modification in Economic and Social Beliefs

From somewhere about the middle of the nineteenth century (1840-1854) the unsystematic socialism of the artisans began, though it must be admitted in the most indirect way, to mingle with, to influence and to be influenced by, the opinions of thinkers

1 Trade unionism came far oftener into conflict with manufacturers than with landowners. See, however, as to the case of the Dorchester labourers, Webb, pp. 123, 124; R. v. Lovelace, 6 C. & P. 596; Law Magazine, xi. pp. 460, 473; and Walpole, History, iii. pp. 229, 231.

2 The repeal of the corn laws, though the triumph of liberalism, had one indirect effect not looked for by philosophic Radicals. The repeal so completely removed the root of bitterness which had created animosity and distrust between the different classes of the community, that, like the abandonment of chartism by the artisans, it promoted the growth of goodwill, and therefore the formation of an alliance between all persons who, to whatever class or party they belonged, had common proclivities towards socialism.

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or writers who adhered to very different schools, and Lecture though they were mostly opposed to utilitarianism, belonged in some instances to the Benthamite school. It is no accident that Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets (1849-1850), filled with denunciations of laissez faire, the Tracts on Christian Socialism (1850), which turned men's hearts towards the duties of Christians as the members of society, Kingsley's Alton Locke (1850), which to many contemporaries seemed to preach rank socialism, Mrs Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848), which painted sympathetically the position of workmen conducting a strike, and thereby earned the bitter censure of W. R. Greg, the representative of economists and mill-owners-all belonged to the years 1848-1850. It is no accident that at about the same time,' Comtism, with its distrust of political economy,2 began to exert authority in England, and obtained disciples among men who interested themselves deeply in the welfare of the working classes. If Alton Locke, with its feeble and uninteresting tailor poet, and the Latter Day Pamphlets, with their bluster and bombast, redeemed here and there by flashes of insight, are in 1905 less readable than a volume of old sermons, the welcome which these books received is of deep import, for it displays a widespread distrust in the dominant liberalism of the day, and was a sure sign of a then approaching revolution in public opinion. Most significant of all was the publication in 1848 of Mill's Political Economy; the very title of this celebrated book-Principles of Political Economy, with some

1 Publication of Miss Martineau's translation of Comte's Philo. sophie Positive, 1853.

2 Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive, iv. 264-280.

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Lecture of their Applications to Social Philosophy—has a special meaning. The treatise is an attempt by the intellectual leader of the Benthamite school to bring accepted economic doctrines into harmony with the aspirations of the best men among the working classes.1 It is to-day, at any rate, perfectly clear that from 1848 onwards an alteration becomes perceptible in the intellectual and moral atmosphere of England. A change we can now see was taking place in the current of opinion, and a change which was the more important, because it influenced mainly the then rising generation, and therefore was certain to tell upon the opinion of twenty or thirty years laterthat is, of 1870 or 1880. Nor can we now doubt that this revolution of thought tended in the direction of socialism.

Characteristics of Modern Commerce

The extension of trade and commerce is bound up with faith in unlimited competition, but it has, nevertheless, since the middle of the nineteenth century, shaken that confidence in the omnipotence of individual effort and self-help which was the very essence of the liberalism which ruled England during the existence of the middle class Parliament created by the first Reform Act. For combination has gradually become the soul of modern commercial systems. One trade after another has passed from the management of private persons into the hands of corporate bodies created by the State. This revolution may be traced in every volume of the statutebook which has appeared during the last seventy

1 See on Mill's position, Lecture XII. post.

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years or more, and especially in the long line of Lecture Railway Companies Acts passed since 1823,' and in the Joint Stock Companies Acts passed from 1856 to 1862. This This legislation was favoured and promoted by Liberals, but the revolution of which it is the sign has nevertheless tended to diminish, in appearance at least, the importance of individual action, and has given room, and supplied arguments for State intervention in matters of business with which in England the State used to have little or no concern. What, too, is of primary importance, this revolution has accustomed the public to constant interference, for the real or supposed benefit of the country, with the property rights of private persons. The truth of these statements may be shown by a comparison between the position of a coach-owner in 1830 as a carrier of passengers and goods, with the position in 1905 of our great modern carrier, a railway company. The coach-owner set up his business at his own will and carried it on, broadly speaking, on his own terms; he possessed no legal monopoly, he asked for no legal privileges; he needed no Act of Parliament which should authorise him to take the property of

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1 The year in which was passed the Act under which was constructed the Stockton and Darlington Railway. See Annual Register, 1823, p. 241.

2 Here, as in other cases, a law favouring the power of combination has of necessity a twofold, and in a certain sense a contradictory effect. The Companies Acts, introducing the principle of partnerships with limited liability, create an extension of individual freedom. But the same Acts, in so far as they transfer the management of business from the hands of private persons into the hands of corporate bodies, substitute combined for individual action.

3 See for a carrier's common law liability, Leake, Contracts, 4th ed. p. 132, and for its modification by statute, the Carriers Act, 1830, 11 Geo. IV. & 1 Will. IV. c. 68.