Such, during seventy years, has been the gist of our domestic and social policy. Never, assuredly, has a great nation been more ill at ease than was England in 1842. Never, assuredly, has a great nation made such strenuous efforts to cure her inward evils, as has England from then till now.
And the result of all this reformation? Not unimportant, obviously. Though no one can approve all these policies, for some are inconsistent with others of them, and though it may be felt by many of us that certain of them have been mischievous, yet since 1842, by whatever measure we test social progress, whether by average earnings, or by consumption of food, or by the death-rate, or by judicial statistics, or by deposits in savings banks, there has been the improvement of which we are aware.
Nevertheless, at the very moment when, at the opening of the twentieth century, we might have hoped to raise our voice in paean, cruel blows of disappointment descended in hail upon our bewildered and humbled crest.
In 1903, especially, these strokes came thick. The position of our main industries was pronounced to be very critical, while we heard from another standpoint the sensational statement that about 30 per cent of our population is "on the verge of hunger."
Are we, then, to think—and this is the crux and core of everything—that our industrial system is rotten and must go?
