the production and distribution of wealth
under the moral rule of right and wrong; and where those laws of supply and
demand, which we are now taught to regard as immutable ordinances of
nature, were absorbed or superseded by a higher code. It is necessary for
me to repeat that I am not holding up the sixteenth century as a model
which the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has become too
large, employment has become too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of
external control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon
self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and when it
ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called
ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty to
his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of action than
the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so it is not
uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in a normal
condition of militancy against social injustice; when the government was
enabled by happy circumstances to pursue into detail a single and serious
aim at the well-being--well-being in its widest sense--of all members of
the commonwealth. The world, indeed, was not made particularly pleasant. Of
liberty, in the modern sense of the word, of the supposed right of every
man "to do what he will with his own" or with himself, there was no idea.
To the question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will with my
own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with
that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not
allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact
extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from
their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of
interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more
than the theoretic principle, and employers and employed were alike
amenable to a law which both were compelled to obey. The working man of
modern times has bought the extension of his liberty at the price of his
material comfort. The higher classes have gained in luxury what they have
lost in power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty
is with the facts.

CHAPTER II

THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY

Times were changed in England since the second Henry walked barefoot
through