purpose of their rulers.

'To conclude this chapter, then.

'In the brief review of the system under which England was governed,
we have seen a state of things in which the principles of political
economy were, consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an
attempt, more or less successful, was made to bring the production
and distribution of wealth under the moral rule of right or wrong;
and where those laws of supply and demand, which we are now taught to
regard as immutable ordinances of nature, were absorbed or superseded
by a higher code. It is necessary for me to repeat that I am not
holding up the sixteenth century as a model which the nineteenth
might safely follow. The population has become too large, and
employment too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of such control;
while, in default of control, the relapse upon self-interest as the
one motive principle is certain to ensue, and, when it ensues, is
absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called
ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty
to his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of
action than the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so
it is not uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in
a normal condition of militancy against social injustice--when the
Government was enabled, by happy circumstances, to pursue into detail
a single and serious aim at the well-being--well-being in its widest
sense--of all members of the commonwealth. There were difficulties
and drawbacks at that time as well as this. Of Liberty, in the
modern sense of the word--of the supposed right of every man "to do
what he will with his own," or with himself--there was no idea. To
the question, if ever it was asked, "May I not do what I will with my