patrons who, resembling in this respect far-seeing investors of to-day,
dared to be original, and provided him with the necessary ships and
control over the necessary labour. Or let us take the case of the iron
industry of the modern world. This industry, in its vast modern
developments, depends entirely on the discovery made in England of a
method by which iron might be smelted with coal in place of wood. The
completed discovery was due to a succession of solitary men, beginning
with Dud Dudley in the reign of James I., and ending a century later
with Darby of Coalbrookdale. Practically these heroic men had all their
contemporaries against them. Public opinion attacked them through
private persecution and violence. The apathy and vacillation of
governments left them without defence; and had governments then
represented public opinion completely, and had also controlled all
labour and capital, the discovery in question, which was retarded for
three generations, would in all probability have never been made at all.
Arkwright's experience with regard to his spinning-frame was similar.
His epoch-making invention was in danger of being altogether lost,
because the general opinion of the capitalists of his day was against
it; and if all capital had been vested in a representative state, to the
exclusion of the far-seeing individuals who eventually came to his
assistance, its loss would have been almost certain. The successful
development of the automobile did not take place till yesterday--and
why? A steam-driven vehicle ran in Cornwall before the end of the
eighteenth century; but the state and public opinion both condemned it
as dangerous; and all further progress in the matter was checked for
more than twenty years. Then again private enterprise asserted itself,
but only to suffer precisely the same fate. Steam-driven omnibuses plied
between Paddington and Westminster. Steam-driven stage-coaches plied on
the Bath road. But the state and public opinion were again in obstinate
opposition; these vehicles were crushed out of existence by the
imposition of monstrous tolls; and progress was checked a second time
and for a longer period still. An instance yet more modern is that
supplied by the electric lighting of London. The electric lighting of
London was retarded for ten years solely by the attitude which the state
assumed towards private enterprise.

It is needless to multiply illustrations of this kind further; for my
ob