Principles of western civilisation

22 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the members of society were conceived as released in the State into a kind of free and uncontrolled struggle in pursuit of individual gain. In the state of unrestricted competition, contemplated by exponents of the school in England, the conditions in wages, rewards, prices, standards, and results were conceived as slowly moving towards a phase of ultimate economic equalisation throughout the world. Here we have in view the perfectly clear and consistent theory of social order as it was presented by the Manchester school. Its characteristic principle remains, however, to be emphasised. As the advocates of this theory of social order held that, in the state of uncontrolled and unrestricted competition which it contemplated, the tendency of all economic evils would be to cure themselves, a further assumption followed. All sense of responsibility—personal, social, or collective—was therefore regarded as divorced from the incidents and results of the competitive process. The leading conception of the school was, in short, that of non-interference with men in their pursuit of gain throughout the world. And the ultimate conception of the State was that of an irresistible power in the background organised primarily towards providing strict guarantees to men for the possession of what they had secured.’ 1 Tt has been pointed out of England, by the writer quoted, that, although ‘© when we speak to-day of the old Radicalism we almost at once think of

Manchesterism,” the ideas of the modern Liberal movement in England did not at the outset necessarily imply such a conception of organised public life

as here indicated. There has been retrogression. The conditions under +

which the remarkable transition which has taken place in England was accomplished are considered to be associated with two causes: The transition ** was due, in the first place, to the isolation of the economic factor from all the other varied factors of political life, and the making of that one factor the expression

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