to so intolerable slavery" was, in truth, a justification of the existing order.

The social question which, in the previous century, men like Bellers and Winstanley had brought into view, dropped out of notice until the last quarter of the century.

There was, that is to say, no organized resistance possible to the power of individualism; and resistance was unlikely to make itself heard once the resources of the Industrial Revolution were brought into play.

Men discovered with something akin to ecstasy the possibilities of the new inventions; and when the protest came against the misery they effected, it was answered that they represented the working of that natural law by which the energies of men may raise them to success.

And discontent could easily, as with the saintly Wilberforce, be countered by the assertion that it was revolt against the will of God.
II Few lives represent more splendidly than that of Adam Smith the speculative ideal of a dispassionate study of philosophy.