fall in equal measure on the vested interests engaged in business and on the working population engaged in industry. So that the measures taken to safeguard the natural rights of ownership apply with equal force to those who own and those who do not. "The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges or to beg on the street corners." But it has turned out on trial that the vested interests of business are not seriously hampered by these restrictions; inasmuch as any formal restriction on any concerted action between the owners of such vested interests can always be got around by a formal coalition of ownership in the shape of a corporation. The extensive resort to corporate combination of ownership, which is so marked a feature of the nineteenth century, was not foreseen and was not taken into account in the eighteenth century, when the constituent principles of the modern point of view found their way into the common law. The system of Natural Rights is a system of personal rights, among which the rights of ownership are paramount; and among the rights of ownership is the right of free disposal and security of ownership and of credit obligations.
The same line of evasion is not available in the same degree for concerted action between persons who own nothing. Still, in neither case, neither as regards the owners of the country's wealth nor as regards the common man, can these restrictions on personal freedom of action be said to be a serious burden. And any slight mutilation or abridgement of the rule of self-help in their economic relations has been offset by an increasingly broad and liberal construction of the principles of self-direction and equality among men in their civil capacity and their personal relations. Indeed, the increasingly exacting temper of the common man in these countries during this period has made such an outcome unavoidable. By and large, in its formal vindication of personal liberty and equality before the law, the modern point of view has with singular consistency remained intact in the shape in which its principles were stabilised in the eighteenth century, in spite of changing circumstances. In point of formal compliance with their demands, the enlightened ideals of the eighteenth century are, no doubt, more commonly realised in practice today than at any earlier period. So that the modern civilised countries are now, in point of legal form and perhaps also in practical effect, more nearly a body of ungraded and masterless men than any earlier generation has known how to be.
In this modern era, as well as elsewhere and in other times, the circumstances that make for change and reconstruction have been chiefly the material circumstances of everyday life, --
circumstances affecting the ordinary state of industry and ordinary intercourse. These material circumstances have changed notably during the modern era. There has been a progressive change in the state of the industrial arts, which has materially altered the scope and method of industry and the conditions under which men live in all the civilised countries. Accordingly, as a point of comparison, it will be to the purpose to call to mind what were the material circumstances, and more particularly the state of the industrial arts, which underlay and gave character to the modern point of view at the period when its constituent principles were found good and worked out as a stable and articulate system, in the shape in which they have continued to be held since then.
The material conditions of industry, trade and daily life during the period of transition and approach to this modern ground created that frame of mind which we call the modern point of view and dictated that reconstruction of institutional arrangements which has been worked out under its guidance.
Therefore the economic situation which so underlay and conditioned this modern point of view at the period when it was given its stable form becomes the necessary point of departure for any argument bearing on the changes that have been going forward since then, or on any prospective reconstruction that may be due to follow from these changed conditions in the calculable future. An this head, the students of history are in a singularly fortunate position. The whole case is set forth in the works of Adam Smith, with a comprehension and lucidity which no longer calls for praise. Beyond all other men Adam Smith is the approved and faithful spokesman of this modern point of view in all that concerns the economic situation which it assumes as its material ground; and his description of the state of civilised society, trade and industry, as he saw it in his time and as he wished it to stand over into the future, is to be taken without abatement as a competent exposition of those material conditions which were then conceived to underlie civilised society and to dictate the only sound reconstruction of civil and economic institutions according to the modern plan.
But like other men. Adam Smith was a creature of his own time, and what he has to say applies to the state of things as he saw them. What he describes and inquires into is that state of things which was to him the "historical present"; which always signifies the recent past, -- that is to say, the past as it had come under his observation and as it had shaped his outlook.
