ised just
yet.

Thus, I return to my conclusion,--to my platitude, if you will.
Professor Fawcett used to say that he could lay down no rules for the
sphere of government influence, except this rule, that no interference
would do good unless it helped people to help themselves. I think that
the doctrine was characteristic of his good sense, and I fully
subscribe to it. I heartily agree that equality in the sense I have
given, is a most desirable ideal; I agree that we should do all that in
us lies to promote it; I only say that our aims should be always in
consistence with the principle that such equality is only possible and
desirable in so far as the lowest classes are lifted to a higher
standard, morally as well as physically. Of course, that implies
approval of every variety of new institutions and laws, of
co-operation, of profit sharing, of boards of conciliation, of
educational and other bodies for carrying light into darkness and
elevating popular standards of life: but always with the express
condition that no such institution is really useful except as it tends
to foster a genuine spirit of independence, and to supply the moral
improvement without which no outward change is worth a button. This is
a truism, you may say. Yet, when I read the proposals to get rid of
poverty by summarily ordering people to be equal, or to extirpate
pauperism by spending a million upon certain institutions for out-door
relief, I cannot help thinking that it is a truism which requires to be
enforced. The old Political Economy, you say, is obsolete; meaning,
perhaps, that you do not mean to be bothered with its assertions; but
the old Economists had their merits. They were among the first who
realised the vast importance of deeper social questions; they were the
first who tried to treat them scientifically; they were not (I hope)
the last who dared to speak unpleasant truths, simply because they
believed them and believed in their importance. Perhaps, indeed, they
rather enjoyed the practice a little too much, and indulged in it a
little too ostentatiously. Yet, I am sure that, on the whole, it was a
very useful practice, and one which is now scarcely as common as it
should be. People are more anxious to pick holes in their statement of
economic laws than to insist upon the essential fact that, after all,
there are laws, not "laws" made by Parliament, but laws of nature,
which do, and will, determine the production and distribution