except to the enthusiast) that even the moment in which he is most deeply sensible of destruction, may be a moment of the highest ecstasy.
Perhaps I may be charged with having exaggerated the evils here enumerated; but, allowing that they may be materially modified in their operation, according to the degree and method of State interference, I must repeat, with this reservation, that it was my task to follow out the working of that interference to its fullest and furthest consequences. With regard to the whole conduct of the inquiry, I would desire that all considerations of a general nature contained in these pages, be viewed entirely apart from the reality of actual practice. In this reality we do not often find any case fully and purely developed,—we do not see the true working of single elements, separate and by themselves. And it is not to be forgotten, in such a consideration of causes and effects, that when once noxious influences are set in operation, the course of ruin towards which they impel, progresses with rapidly accelerating strides. Just as a greater force united to a greater produces results doubly multiplied in their magnitude and importance; so does a less in conjunction with a less quickly degenerate to infinitesimal issues, which baffle the subtlest penetration to follow them in their rapid grades of declension. Should we even concede, however, that these consequences might be less fatal, the opposite theory would still approve itself the happiest in the truly inestimable blessings that must flow from the application of its principles, if that application should ever be wholly possible. For the ever-restless impulsive force inherent in the very nature of things, incessantly struggles against the operation of every pernicious institution, while it promotes as actively everything of a beneficial tendency; so that we may accept it in the highest sense as true, that the sum of evil produced at any time, even by the
