But this does not exhaust the evidence of the diffusion of wealth which has been going on, a process which is apt to be overlooked in the attention attracted to the building up of a few colossal fortunes. Mr. Mallock shows, by taking the increase in the number of incomes between £150 and £1,000 a year, how greatly the middle classes have increased in numbers. Persons assessed for taxation on incomes between these limits have increased in number during the period under consideration from 300,000 to 990,000, that is, in a ratio of nearly 250 per cent. It is hardly possible to over-estimate the importance of these figures in their bearing on the prospects of the stability of the present social system in Great Britain. Had this enormous increase in wealth been accumulated in a few hands, it must have given a great impetus to the revolutionary agencies always present under settled governments. But its dispersal among a multitude of owners broadens the foundations of authority, and at the same time acts as a powerful check upon legislation for a limited class. It must be admitted that, side by side with the advance in general welfare, certain less desirable incidents of our civilisation claim attention. One of these is the recurrence of disputes on a large scale between employers and workmen, resulting in industrial strikes far exceeding in extent and intensity anything of the sort that could be organised before the legislature relaxed the laws against conspiracy and combination. Although labour disputes are conducted now with a general absence of the violence which almost invariably accompanied them in earlier days, they are not without deplorable results in the losses entailed on the working classes during their continuance, and in the damaging effect they sometimes bring upon the industries affected. But the principle of arbitration is gradually winning its way, and the fact that on several recent occasions recourse to this reasonable method has proved successful in averting a prolonged struggle, encourages the hope that employers and employed are beginning to recognise their common advantage in conciliation. It is less easy to prescribe a remedy for the admitted evil of the excessive aggregation of the people in centres of industry, and the corresponding depletion of the rural districts. This tendency has been at work ever since Virgil wrote his-- "O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolas"-- and perhaps from long before. Increased facilities of locomotion, and the stimulus lent by education to intellectual energy, have intensified the movement; but at all events the worst effects of it on the national physique are being mitigated by the attention directed to sanitary engineering.