“If, then, you can only continue that consumption—if, _by your legislation_, under the favour of Providence, _you can maintain the demand for labour and make your trade and manufactures prosperous_, you are not only increasing the {281} sum of human happiness, but are giving the agriculturists of this country the best chance of that increased demand which must contribute to their welfare.”—_Times_, Feb. 22, 1850. Thus the prosperity really due to the abandonment of all legislation, is ascribed to a particular kind of legislation. “_You_ can maintain the demand,” he says; “_you_ can make trade and manufactures prosperous;” whereas, the facts he quotes prove that they can do this only by doing nothing. The essential truth of the matter—that law had been doing immense harm, and that this prosperity resulted not from law but from the absence of law—is missed; and his faith in legislation in general, which should, by this experience, have been greatly shaken, seemingly remains as strong as ever. Here, again, is the House of Lords, apparently not yet believing in the relationship of supply and demand, adopting within these few weeks the standing order― “That before the first reading of any bill for making any work in the construction of which compulsory power is sought to take thirty houses or more inhabited by the labouring classes in any one parish or place, the promoters be required to deposit in the office of the clerk of the parliaments a statement of the number, description, and situation of the said houses, the number (so far as they can be estimated) of persons to be displaced, _and whether any and what provision is made in the bill for remedying the inconvenience likely to arise from such displacements_.” If, then, in the comparatively simple relationships of trade, the teachings of experience remain for so many ages unperceived, and are so imperfectly apprehended when they are perceived, it is scarcely to be hoped that where all social phenomena—moral, intellectual, and physical—are involved, any due appreciation of the truths displayed will presently take place. The facts cannot yet get recognized as facts. As the alchemist attributed his successive disappointments to some disproportion in the ingredients, some impurity, or some too great temperature, and never to the futility of his process or the impossibility of his aim; so, every failure of State-regulations the law-worshipper explains away as being caused by this trifling oversight, or that little {282} mistake: all which oversights and mistakes he assures you will in future be avoided. Eluding the facts as he does after this fashion, volley after volley of them produce no effect.