forces. This was the theory which was
called orthodox political economy--the _laisser-faire_ system--the
philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or
even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
strenuous Government intervention--which was, in fact, far more
important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'

It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
did when they were first put out some fifty years ago. One of the
most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
cutting in