economy, and they were everywhere apparently accepted as authorized interpreters of the mysteries of that, to the ordinary public, somewhat occult science. They preached the freedom of exchange like a religion which contained at once all they were required to believe in economic matters, and all they were required to do. There was ground for Lassalle's well-known taunt: "Get a starling, Herr Schultze, teach it to pronounce the word 'exchange,' 'exchange,' 'exchange,' and you have produced a very good modern economist." The German Manchester Party certainly gave to the principle of _laissez-faire, laissez-aller_, a much more unconditional and universal application than any party in this country thought of according to it. They looked on it as a kind of orthodoxy which it had come to be almost impious to challenge. It had been hallowed by the consensus of the primitive fathers of the science, and it seemed now to be confirmed beyond question experimentally by the success of the practical legislation in which it had been exemplified during the previous quarter of a century. The adherents of the new school never raised a murmur against all this up till the eventful time of the socialist agitation and the formation of the new German Empire, and the reason is very plain. On the economic questions which came up before that period, they were entirely at one with the Free Traders, and gave a hearty support to their energetic lead. They were, for example, as strenuously opposed to protective duties and to restrictions upon liberty of migration, settlement, and trading, as Manchester itself. But with the socialist agitation of 1863, a new class of economic questions came to the front--questions respecting the condition of the working classes, the relations of capital and labour, the distribution of national wealth, and the like--and on these new questions they could not join the Free Traders in saying "Hands off!" They did not believe with the Manchester school that the existing distribution of wealth was the best of all possible distributions, because it was the distribution which Nature herself produced. They thought, on the contrary, that Nature had little to do with the matter; but even if it had more, there was only too good cause for applying strong corrections by art. They said it was vain for the Manchester party to deny that a social question existed, and to maintain that the working classes were as well off as it was practical for economic arrangements to make them. They declared there was much truth in the charges which socialists were bringing against the existing order of things, and that there was a decided call upon all the powers of society, and, among others, especially upon the State, to intervene with some remedial measures. A good opportunity for concerted and successful action seemed to be afforded when the German Empire was established, and this led to the convening of the Eisenach