To look back, for a moment, to the first eighty years, or thereabouts, of the industrial movement in question, it must be said that it failed, on the whole, to attain its proper end. The sober historian of nineteenth-century England, Spencer Walpole, has pointed out that in the early part of that period the labouring classes "were perpetually becoming more and more impoverished," "the most frightful distress was almost universally prevalent." And, as time went on, things got worse. By 1830 their condition was "growing more and more intolerable." But even this was "as nothing compared with the protracted wretchedness which commenced in 1837 and continued in 1842." And he concluded by saying: "I desire to express my deliberate opinion that the wave of misery in Britain reached its summit in the course of 1842."
Since that date, for seventy years our statesmen have laboured with zeal to remedy such a condition of affairs. They have pursued a sixfold domestic policy, not always consistent with itself, perhaps, but creditable, at any rate, to their goodwill and resource.
First, there has been the establishment of Free Trade, in the hope that cheap food for the masses and cheap raw materials for the manufacturers would curb the evils of the commonwealth. Secondly, there was the policy of economy in public expenditure, which culminated with Mr. Gladstone's proposal in 1874 to abolish the income tax. I remember being told by Mr. Gladstone, some two
