to society than theorizing fears had predicted. The thorough understanding amongst all classes and vocations—that the car of progress must have its perfectly free course, and that no one class or trade was to be protected at the expense of the rest—had everywhere the best possible effect in stimulating all parties to face their respective contingencies, and to enter heartily upon the larger and better field everywhere opened to them. The great resources arising out of the universal diffusion of education enabled such classes as were in turn from time to time affected by the various and not seldom rapid economic changes of that stirring age, to bear them with comparative impunity, and to adjust themselves with more or less facility to the new circumstances.
Then, again, the co-operative principle had, with this twentieth century, successfully pervaded all industrial life, thus largely realizing Yellowly's ambitious anticipations as to his class-fellows becoming themselves principals instead of servants in their various work. This position was all the more easily attained amongst a universally educated people, by the greater efficiency and promptitude of result given to labour by universal mechanical appliance. Large capital became thus, for many kinds of undertakings, almost quite a secondary consideration. By the cheapness and excellence of all kinds of machinery, which our skilled countrymen turned out at home, or our free ports invited from all parts of the world, and by the quick turn over of work which such machinery effected, co-operations of working-men were enabled, even with very limited spare means, to compete successfully with great
