as he does not infringe on the rights or property of others, is one of those privileges which the free and happy constitution of this country has long accustomed every Briton to consider as his birthright."[104] The aristocracy and the commercial classes alike distrusted an interference which restricted their personal freedom. The Radicals, who professed to be, and were much more alive to the distresses of the labourers and artisans, were hardly less emphatic. "All government," said Dr. Price, "even within a State, becomes tyrannical as far as it is a needless and wanton exercise of power, or is carried farther than is absolutely necessary to preserve the peace or to secure the safety of the State. This {103} is what an excellent writer calls 'governing too much.'"[105] "Government," said Godwin, "can have no more than two legitimate purposes, the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community and defence against external invasion."[106] Most of the Radicals were in fact of the middle class, and few of them saw things from the workman's point of view. However far they went, they were careful to maintain the rights of property. "The phrase 'domineering rich' is exceptionable," said Major Cartwright, "as it may, by cavillers, be construed into an attempt to excite the poor to invade the property of the rich. It is not by an invasion of such property that the condition of the poor is to be amended, but by such equal laws as would have a natural tendency to prevent injustice, and to benefit every class of the community."[107] A free Parliament would allow every man an equal chance of obtaining wealth. Neither Cartwright nor any of his associates seems to have considered that, while wealth was accumulated in the hands of a small class, equality, even of opportunity, was impossible without some measure of State interference. What was needed by the working class was the removal of taxes upon food and raw materials, a helpful instead of a degrading Poor Law, the right to combine against their employers, and factory legislation. But the speculators were more concerned to reduce the interference of aristocratic government with the liberty of the middle class than to increase the interference of any sort of government with the working class, and they failed to see that the workmen's grievances were not the same as their own. A man who was wellnigh pressed to death with heavy weights was to be relieved by an improvement in the ventilation of the torture-chamber.