but a callous fraud, implies conditions in which men are really free to contract or to refuse; and insisted that all wholesome competition implies "adequate equipment for the competitors." It is impossible to say exactly how all these influences intertwined and co-operated. One man was swayed by one force; another by another; and, after long years of subterranean working, a moment came, as it comes to the germinating seed deep-hidden in the furrow, when it must pierce the superincumbent mass, and show its tiny point of life above ground.[58] The General Election of 1880, by dethroning Lord Beaconsfield and putting Gladstone in power, had fulfilled the strictly political objects which during the preceding three years my friends and I had been trying to attain. So we, who entered Parliament at that Election, were set free, at the very outset of our public career, to work for the Social Reform which we had at heart. We earnestly desired to make the lives of our fellow-men healthier, sweeter, brighter, and more humane; and it was an ennobling and invigorating ambition, lifting the pursuit of politics, out of the vulgar dust of office-seeking and wire-pulling, into the purer air of unselfish endeavour. To some of us it was much more; for it meant the application of the Gospel of Christ to the practical business of modern life. But the difficulties were enormous. The Liberal party still clung to its miserable old mumpsimus of _Laissez-faire_, and steadily refused to learn the new and nobler language of Social Service. Alone among our leading men, Mr. Chamberlain seemed to apprehend the truth that political reform is related to social reform as the means to the end, and that Politics, in its widest sense, is the science of human happiness. But, in spite of all discouragements, we clung to "a Social Philosophy which, however materialistic some of its tendencies might have become, had been allied with the spiritual Hegelianism with which we had been touched. It took its scientific shape in the hands of Karl Marx, but it also floated to us, in dreams and visions, using our own Christian language, and invoking the unity of the Social Body, as the Law of Love, and the Solidarity of Humanity."[59]