The era of social reform followed on the rise of modern industrialism,
and, no doubt largely on this account, although an international
movement, it first became definite and self-conscious in England. There
were perhaps other reasons why it should have been in the first place
specially prominent in England. When at the end of the seventeenth
century, Muralt, a highly intelligent Swiss gentleman, visited England,
and wrote his by no means unsympathetic _Lettres sur les Anglais_, he
was struck by a curious contradiction in the English character. They are
a good-natured people, he observed, very rich, so well-nourished that
sometimes they die of obesity, and they detest cruelty so much that by
royal proclamation it is ordained that the fish and the ducks of the
ponds should be duly and properly fed. Yet he found that this
good-natured, rich, cruelty-hating nation systematically allowed the
prisoners in their gaols to die of starvation. "The great cruelty of
the English," Muralt remarks, "lies in permitting evil rather than in
doing it."[1] The root of the apparent contradiction lay clearly in a
somewhat excessive independence and devotion to liberty. We give a man
full liberty, they seem to have said, to work, to become rich, to grow
fat. But if he will not work, let him starve. In that point of view
there were involved certain fallacies, which became clearer during the
course of social evolution.

It was obvious, indeed, that such an attitude, while highly favourable
to individual vigour and independence, and not incompatible with fairly
healthy social life under the conditions which prevailed at the time,
became disastrous in the era of industrialism. The conditions of
industrial life tore up the individual from the roots by which he
normally received strength, and crowded the workers together in masses,
thus generating a confusion which no individual activity could grapple
with. So it was that the very spirit which, under the earlier
conditions, made for good now made for evil. To stand by and applaud the
efforts of the individual who was perhaps slowly sinking deeper and
deeper into a miry slough of degradation began to seem an even
diabolical attitude. The maxim of _laissez-faire_, which had once stood
for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began to
be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must be
an intelligent superintendence of social conditions, humane regulation,
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