Principles of western civilisation

434 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

social development among the winning peoples is, by necessity inherent in the evolutionary process, tending more and more to represent a principle which is projecting its meaning beyond the content of all existing interests. The process of progress, in short, no longer tends, as in the ancient civilisations, towards the ascendency therein of qualities merely necessary to success and survival in a free fight, all the principles of which are contained within the limits of political consciousness.

If the observer looks back over the history of the movement in England, in which the first conception of free competition was extended to the principles of commerce between nations, it may be observed that, almost from the beginning, a very clearly defined attitude or policy in international relations accompanied the economic theories of the Manchester school. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century this attitude came to be described by various names, according to the point of view of those who discussed it. It is, on the whole, most generally known as the attitude of Non-intervention, although, as we shall see presently, it would in many senses be still more correctly described as the attitude of Non-responstbility. To understand the nature of the international position to which we are now slowly advancing in the world, it is of great importance that the mind should, at this point, clearly grasp the relationship of this policy, of non-responsibility in international relations, to the fundamental ideas, already described, of the J/azssez-fatre or Manchester school, and to perceive how naturally the whole theory of international trade with which it