The few friends who met in a small chamber in 1828 and initiated the Manchester and Salford Co-operative Schools were fired by enthusiasm. The poor weavers of Toad Lane, who saved their hard-earned pence and divided their first chest of tea, were filled with pity for their suffering brethren, and eagerly gave the poor room, the precious time, the exhausting thought--all they had to give--to establish the brotherly principle of mutual help. And the large-hearted leaders of the movement, who changed the name of Christian Socialist to Co-operator--Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, Hughes, and many another of the first noble little band--laid down a spiritual basis as the essential foundation of durable material success. It has been said of the labouring classes ‘that they are unfit for any order of things which would make any considerable demand on either their intellect or their virtue.’ The enlightened co-operator perceives that this is true of all classes of men, rich or poor, in a state of things where industry is ruled by unlimited competition, and trade subjects everything to the domination of money. Where all restrictions are removed, but no sympathy developed, new forms of oppression and revenge arise. Co-operation, therefore, announces a fundamental law of durable political economy. It adopts mutual aid instead of antagonism in industry, extends a share of the results of labour in equitable proportion to all who produce them, and replaces competition in money-getting by emulation in superiority of production. Thus sympathy, the first necessary foundation of industry and social union, is being slowly evolved by the trials, the failures, but the ultimately assured success of the Co-operative movement. This gradual recognition of the necessary basis of progressive political economy--trust, freedom, and sympathy (here slightly hinted at)--is itself founded upon a rock--viz., the immutability of the Creator’s law of Moral Government, the adaptation of the human constitution to its surroundings, the only method by which steady growth can be secured. The waves of selfishness and false theories dash themselves vainly against this rock, and race after race perishes in the foolish attempt to set aside the Moral Law.