Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 23

- Whatever may have been the intention with which the Manchester school set out; whatever may have been the desires of its individual members; or of the conviction of its individual exponents to the effect that economic evils left alone would cure themselves ; whatever may even be the eventual justification of its theories as those of a necessary condition of society intervening between two epochs of the world’s development ;—there can apparently be no longer any doubt as to the essential meaning of the phase of social development which Manchesterism represents. As the evolutionist watches the world-process slowly falling throughout our civilisation to the level of its ruling factor; as he sees it gradually, but inevitably in the conditions described, eliminating from economic competition in its various phases all qualities and conditions but those contributing to success and survival therein ;—the impression produced on the mind becomes definite. The largeness of the stage upon which the world-drama is being enacted obscures for a time the controlling meaning. But the distinctive character of the process as a whole begins at last to be manifest. The principles of the Manchester school have, he sees, one meaning which ultimately overlies and overreaches all others. They are the characteristic vehicle through which the present has endeavoured to express its ascendency in the modern political drama in our civilisation. They are the principles which correspond to

of all public purpose. In the second place, it was apparently largely due to the action of that section of the Chartists who, under the lead of Feargus O’Connor, resolutely and vehemently cut adrift from the middle-class Radicals, leaving the latter immersed in business, without the helping hand of labour, absorbed (as it was inevitable they should be) in the problem of material production, and with no fruitful view of the position and functions of the State” (Political Science Quarterly, vol. xiv.).