The riches of the well-to-do give their children--who, as we have seen, are not necessarily the most capable--an immense pull in life’s competition with the sons of the poor, with the result that, certainly in the great majority of cases, the poor man’s child is beaten. Putting on one side the question of the father’s personal influence in the way of obtaining advantageous positions for his children, who generally have an opening in his profession or line of business, the rich man is able to equip them with an expensive education which is essential to their getting on in the world. A vigorous personality always counts for much, but training is essential, and training has until quite recently only been obtainable by the well-to-do classes. The English universities and public schools had until lately become the monopoly of the upper and professional classes, to the exclusion, even among these classes, of many who differed in creed from the majority of the community. The doors of every profession were barred except to those who possessed capital, and the children of the poor were frequently unable to obtain even the elements of book knowledge, except in Scotland, where primary education had the start of England by three hundred years. The fact that as many as 41 per cent. of persons married in 1839 were unable to write their own names, illustrates how enormously a large mass of the community must have been handicapped by their want of training. Not only have the richer classes been able to start their children with capital and a better training than their poorer neighbours, but the poorer classes have--and this, too, in comparatively recent times--been actively repressed. We can in this connection recall the fact that before the sixteenth century, English labourers were compelled to receive wages fixed in some cases by law, and in other cases by justices, who were often themselves employers of labour. Their wages were determined chiefly by the price of provisions, and in order to prevent migration with a view to the bettering of their wages, they were confined to the place of their birth by the imposition of very serious punishment, if they left their native places to work elsewhere. It is not sought in any way in these pages to adduce these instances of what we should now call unfair dealing with a view to bringing discredit upon the holders of wealth. We have no reason to suppose that our forefathers were consciously unfair, and there is little doubt that many usages current at the present day will be viewed by our descendants as gross outrages upon the principles of justice as understood by them.