. Human agency could not
increase its volume, it could only vary its distribution. And further,
as every man has the right to sell his labour for what he can obtain for
it, any interference between the recipients was held to be unjust.

"That theory," as Mr Hammond has told us, "became supreme in economics,
and the whole movement for trade-union organisation had to fight its way
against this solid superstition[21]."

The doctrine of free labour achieved a wonderful popularity; but then,
as the writer I have just quoted reminds us: "Free labour had not Adam
Smith's meaning: it meant the freedom of the employer to take what
labour he wanted, at the price he chose and under the conditions he
thought proper[22]."

More and more therefore the employers and the workers drifted apart, and
the supreme misfortune was that the one power which might have drawn
them together was itself in a state of semi-paralysis in regard to the
corporate responsibility of the community. That power was religion.
There were times, as I shall endeavour to point out later, when
Christianity was able to produce an atmosphere of comradeship stronger
than the differences of class. But to the very great loss of both
country and Church this was not one of them.

At the moment when the corporate message of the Church was needed, it
was looking the other way, and concentrating its thought on the
individual. The Reformation was in large measure a revolt from the
imperial to the personal conception of religion. I do not deny that this
revolt was necessary and beneficial. But the reaction from the corporate
aspect of Christianity went too far. When this reaction was further
reinforced by the Puritan movement, which with all its strength and its
fine austerity fastened its attention on the minutiae of personal
conduct, and left the community as such almost out of sight, it is not
surprising to find that religion at the end of the 18th, and through a
large part of the 19th century, failed to produce just that sense of
brotherhood which would have mitigated the whole situation and prevented
much of the practical paganism which I have described.

Even the great revival connected with the name of John Wesley brought
all its fire to bear on the conversion of the _man_, when the social
unit which was most in need of that conversion was the community. The
result of all this was that, partly owing to ignorance, partly owing to
prejudice, partly owing to the misre