The work of the Utilitarians was Liberal, so far as it went. Their insistence upon the equal value of all individuals led to the removal of restrictions upon liberty. No man could know the interest of another. Therefore every man must be left, as far as possible, to himself. Each must control his own government. Each must be permitted to hold and to publish his own opinions. Trade and manufacture must be left to the unfettered discretion of traders and manufacturers. The Government must stand away from the individual, except when, as for national defence, some central control was inevitable. This course of reasoning led the Benthamites into the neglect of economic problems which was the great blemish of their practical politics. The economists had arrived at the theory of _laissez faire_ by a different route. Both schools now gave a scientific expression to the old English dislike of Government interference, which the Whigs cherished as part of their inheritance from the past, and the new middle class as the result of their methods of industry. All four groups agreed in this claim for individual freedom, and the humanitarian tendencies of Benthamism were sacrificed to its pedantry. Enterprise was allowed full play. Protective duties were reduced and finally abolished. Competition stimulated and encouraged the production of wealth. But while the masters profited, the workpeople suffered. There is a very precise indication of the way in which the political economy of the day and the Utilitarian theorizing combined to neglect the peculiar miseries of the common people, in a speech of Joseph Hume. He was speaking against the Framework Knitters' Bill of 1812, which proposed to fix maximum and minimum rates of wages, and to prohibit the payment of workmen otherwise than in cash. Hume declared that the function of the State in economic matters was "to protect both {160} masters and workmen, and allow every individual to exert himself in employing his capital and labour in such an honourable manner as he may think best; every one in general being the best judge of his own abilities how to employ his stock in trade.... Viewing capitalists and artisans equally as traders, I consider an uncontrolled competition as beneficial to both, and the strongest spur to ingenuity and industry.... If it should be more convenient or profitable for a workman to receive payment for his labour partly or wholly in goods, why should he be prevented from doing so? For if such a practice is inconvenient or injurious to any man, he will not work a second time for the master who pays him in that manner."[197] In the same speech Hume declared that he would put masters and men on an equal footing by the repeal of the Combination Acts, and the Acts were repealed, on Hume's motion, in 1824. This speech and the repeal of the Acts were Benthamite in essence. But equal treatment by the State was not equality, and to leave masters and men free to fight out their disputes was not to