It has not been by command of
any ruler that some men have become manufacturers, while others have
remained cultivators of the soil. In Lancashire, millions have devoted
themselves to the making of cotton-fabrics; in Yorkshire, another
million lives by producing woollens; and the pottery of Staffordshire,
the cutlery of Sheffield, the hardware of Birmingham, severally occupy
their hundreds of thousands. These are large facts in the structure of
English society; but we can ascribe them neither to miracle, nor to
legislation. It is not by "the hero as king," any more than by
"collective wisdom," that men have been segregated into producers,
wholesale distributors, and retail distributors. Our industrial
organization, from its main outlines down to its minutest details, has
become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but, to a
considerable extent, in spite of legislative hindrances. It has arisen
under the pressure of human wants and resulting activities. While each
citizen has been pursuing his individual welfare, and none taking
thought about division of labour, or conscious of the need of it,
division of labour has yet been ever becoming more complete. It has been
doing this slowly and silently: few having observed it until quite
modern times. By steps so small, that year after year the industrial
arrangements have seemed just what they were before--by changes as
insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has
become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see.
And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization.
Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is
supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to
others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular
working of this combination during the past week; and could it be
suddenly abolished, multitudes would be dead before another week ended.
If these most conspicuous and vital arrangements of our social structure
have arisen not by the devising of any one, but through the individual
efforts of citizens to satisfy their own wants; we may be tolerably
certain that the less important arrangements have similarly arisen.

"But surely," it will be said, "the social changes directly produced by
law, cannot be classed as spontaneous growths. When parliaments or kings
order this or that thing to be done, and appoint officials to do it, the