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ON INDUSTRIAL PART;VERSHlPS. ’25
made, and many a disastrom failure incnrred, before the men of
a trade will see that they cannot ultimately find their exclusive
benolit in the injury of others, and that the supremo law of the
general welfare forbids them to do it if they could. I feel that
Sir G. C. Lewis was right when he said that mankind must
suffer before they have discovered the true tendencies of tho
protective theory of labour now enjoying popular favour.
I believe, then, that we may say of the present time and
subject, again in the words of Bacon, that, a froward retention
of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation.” Nay,
more so : the turbulence is in the present state of things, and
the innovation, I trust, will be its end. If the maters insist
upon retaining their ancient customs; if they will shroud their
profits in mystery, and treat their men as if they mere another
class of beings, whose interests were wholly sepamte and
opposito; I $80 t.roublo in tho future ns in tho past. But I
trust they mill accept tho chnngo which timu is prossing on
them. The har ring of profits is one of those apparently
obvious inventions, at tho simplicity of which men will wondor
in an after-age. There mas a time in England, not so long
ago, when wages wore tho last new invention, tho most
turbulent innovation. It scorns natural now that a man
should be paid for mhnt he does; but, to our Norman forefathers
the matter did not present itself in this light. Tho
Public Record Office could furnish many a proof, I dare say,
of the presumption and turbulence of those Saxon serfs who
asked for pay. Laborious historians can trace precisely how
the Saxon slave became by degrees the free and wage-paid
journeyman. We can almost put our finger on the year when
the thin end of the wedge was first inserted, and can point to
every step in its progress home. Not without bitter strife and
suffering was so great a change effected. There is the thin
end of some wedge, as I believe, in the present state of things,
and it is our duty to endeavour to detect the direction in
which it is tending. It is the part of wisdom not to think
that things will always be 88 they have been, still less to think
that the relations of society can be shaped according to oar
Own nafiow wishes and ideas. It is the work of economical