And always the hope is latent that “something will turn up” which will solve all the unfortunate social problems, and make every one happy and content. Sometimes it is to be the advance of mechanical discovery, sometimes a new spirit of kindliness and patience: sometimes fuller conquests of trade or commerce or Imperial dominion; but always the bringing in from outside of a _Deus ex machina_ which will supplement nobody’s loss with everybody’s gain. The advance in acquisition during a century of invention has been so astonishing, the progress of whole classes from a low-grade, comfortless, ignorant life into a highly-paid, skilled, intelligent working people so remarkable, that to many the continuance of such a process seems inevitable. Amelioration is to come as a legitimate child of the forces of change, and without effort or sacrifice is to reveal a continuous process of uplifting. Certainly by all material and tangible tests--income, prices, security, comfort, addition to leisure and wages--the bulk of the people of this country have advanced so incredibly since the “Hungry Forties” that the reality of those days would appear to the present generation but as bad dreams. They cannot believe that these things were actually enacted upon these islands less than eighty years ago. The Report of the Royal Commission on Children’s Labour in the Factories,--the most sensational blue book of the century,--for example, would seem rather to refer to the Spaniards in the West Indies or the administration of King Leopold in the Congo than to the solid ground and pleasant airs of England. And in every kind of material test--fall of pauperism, fall of the death-rate, decline of infectious and poverty diseases--or increase of wages, shortening of hours of labour, fall in prices; or, again, spread of education and of means of recreation, improvement in houses and in the sanitation of cities, the offering of opportunities of advancement: in all these the advance has been so amazing that there would seem to be no place for the pessimist who would prophesy coming disaster.