Economic Liberalism had everywhere become triumphant. In France the corporation era was definitely at an end by 1791. Some manufacturers, it is true, demanded its re-establishment under the First Empire; but they were disappointed, and their demands were never re-echoed. In England the last trace of the Statute of Apprentices, that shattered monument of the Parliamentary _régime_, was removed from the Statute Book in 1814. Nothing remained which could possibly check the advent of _laissez-faire_. Free competition became universal. The State renounced all rights of interference either with the organisation of production or with the relations between masters and men, save always the right of prohibiting combinations in restraint of trade, and this restriction was upheld with a view to giving free play to the law of demand and supply. In France the Penal Code of the Empire proved as tyrannous as the old _régime_ or the Revolution; and although freedom of combination was granted in England by an Act of 1825, the defined limits were so narrow that the privilege proved quite illusory. The general opinion of the English legislator is well expressed in the report of a Commission appointed by the House of Commons in 1810, quoted by Mr. and Mrs. Webb.[363] “No interference of the legislature with the freedom of trade, or with the perfect liberty of every individual to dispose of his time and of his labour in the way and on the terms which he may judge most conducive to his own interest, can take place without violating general principles of the first importance to the prosperity and happiness of the community.” In both countries—in England as well as in France—a _régime_ of individual contract was introduced into industry, and no legal intervention was allowed to limit this liberty—a liberty, however, which really existed only on the side of the employers. Under this _régime_ the new manufacturing industry, born of many inventions, was wonderfully developed. In Great Britain Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow, in France Lille, Sedan, Rouen, Elbeuf, Mulhouse, became the chosen centres of large-scale production. Alongside of these brilliant successes we have two new phenomena which were bound to draw the attention of observers and to invite the reflection of the thoughtful. First we have the concentration in the great centres of wealth of a new and miserable class—the workers; and, secondly, we have the phenomenon of over-production.