tion. Very important
questions were raised as to the rights of the press, for example, or the
system of representation. But everybody agreed that the representative
system and freedom of speech were good things; and argued the immediate
questions of fact. The order, only established by experience and
tradition, was accepted, subject to criticism of detail, and men turned
impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social
contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries.
Politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a
business-like spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to
'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and
resents the intrusion of first principles.

The characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark.
Individual energy and sense of responsibility are good--as even extreme
socialists may admit--if they do not exclude a sense of duties to
others. It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual
enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led
to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. But it would be a
complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a
decline of humane feeling. Undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and
some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or even
stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. But, in the
first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist
spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity. They
were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, I
believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest
classes. Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of
restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to
all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam Smith's
position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential
order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his
neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not
opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should
first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would
thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in
the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the
most marked characteristic of the eig