If you assist the process by compulsion, or by any artificial aid, you may be removing the wrong people, or you may be removing them to the wrong place." Now the reply to the main _laissez faire_ position is conclusive.

Just as water, though always tending to find its own level, does not actually find it when it is dammed up in some pool by natural or artificial earthworks, so labour stored in the persons of poor and ignorant men and women is not in fact free to seek the place of most profitable employment.

The highlands of labour are drained by this natural flow; even the strain of competition in skilled hand-labour finds sensible relief by the voluntary emigration of the more adventurous artisans, but the poor low-skilled workers suffer here again by reason of their poverty: no natural movement can relieve the plethora of labour-power in low-class employments.

The fluidity of low-skilled labour seldom exceeds the power of moving from one town to a neighbouring town, or from a country district to the nearest market towns, or to London in search of work.

If the lowlands are to be drained at all, it must be done by an artificial system.