These voluntarily associated groups will form themselves around any interest of sufficient importance; and, as we have seen, they are of the most various character and raise the most various questions concerning their relation to the commonwealth.[35] This is a subject still in the earlier stages of exploration and likely to be of increasing importance for our political and social philosophies, especially as it comes to be recognised that for the most part the groups which are here spoken of represent interests and needs more vital to human nature than the accidental aggregations represented by political states. It may, moreover, be held that the multiplication of such groups within the commonwealth, insomuch as they bear upon real interests of life, is much to be encouraged; and the commonwealth which knows what is good for its people will impose no restrictions upon their power and readiness to form themselves into combinations of this kind. And indeed, however absolute the authority of the state, it cannot prevent the formation of voluntary associations. If it be not permitted to form these associations openly, they will be formed secretly; and the secret society is the undoing of commonwealths. Footnote 35: The commonest and the oldest type of freely associated group within the commonwealth is of course the Church, and on this point the reader may be referred to the present writer’s book _The Church in the Commonwealth_. As a matter of fact, the state has always been apprehensive and suspicious of combinations of any kind within its own bounds and has endeavoured either to repress them or to establish the principle that they exist only on sufferance. But no attempts at repression when they are directed at associations that represent real human concerns have been permanently successful. The repeal in 1824 of the British Acts against combination, intended chiefly to frustrate industrial unions, whether of employers or of workers, is typical of the fate of such legislation. These Acts went against the actual facts of the human situation and naturally proved disastrous. It is in this region of industrial combinations that we have the best modern illustration of the spontaneity and inevitability of voluntary human association. In the Guild period it was broadly true that Capital and Labour being in the same hands had interests which were identical; but when power-driven machinery separated Capital from Labour and lodged them in different hands, and as the rift widened through the operation of _laissez-faire_, and the interests of Capital and Labour became antagonistic, it was natural that the capitalists and the workers should severally combine in defence of their interests. The state prayed a plague on both their houses at that time, being equally afraid of both; later, the state became more complaisant to the powerful owning classes; and looked askance only at the workers’ unions—an attitude which led to a very