And as corroboration of this, we see that in all ages, kings and despots who have won for themselves supreme power, whether by the sword, or by usurpation, or as a free gift of their followers, have always taken the largest share of the industrial wealth for themselves; have given their supporters, courtiers, or accomplices, the next largest; and have thrown only the leavings to the great masses of the population, to be struggled for by pure competition among themselves. The great landowners of the past in all countries competed only in War and Politics, but in Industry they left the competition for their favours to their tradesmen, dependents, and menials. In Modern Capitalist Industry beginning with Adam Smith, it is the capitalists whose power makes of them a loose informal combination, while the individual workmen have to compete for their favours, and so their remuneration, or wages, for services rendered tend to equality. More recently, the workmen have, with the greatest difficulty, managed to combine on their own account; and the masters, no longer able to squeeze them as before to make good their trade losses, have been obliged to enter into cut-throat competition with each other to secure the custom of the Public, with the usual consequence that they in turn were having their profits reduced to a minimum, if not to an equality.

It was this stage in the evolution of Industry that Mill and the economists who succeeded him saw going on before their eyes, and from which they deduced the doctrines of their text-books, - doctrines which, believing this stage to be the final and permanent one, they proceeded to elevate into what they imagined were the eternal laws of Political Economy. But just when they had got their science perfected, as they thought, the great capitalists and captains of Industry kicked their feet through it by uniting themselves into those giant Trusts which have crushed out all their smaller competitors; with the result that the Public which had formerly squeezed the capitalists of their profits by making them compete like rival gladiators in the old Roman arena, for its favour, now found itself, in turn, to its surprise, between the upper millstone of the Trusts and the lower one of the consolidated phalanx of Trades-Unionism; - and there it is likely to remain so long as the present industrial regime lasts.

And yet, although all economic things in the present stage of industrial development tend to inequality in so far as the action of the purely economic influences that play through them are concerned, it is necessary to observe in order to give our subject more completeness, that there is always in Political Economy as in all other departments of Civilization, some part of the field which has been subjected to the levelling influence of equality; and further, that wherever and whenever this has occurred, it has always, as in general Civilization (as I attempted to demonstrate in the first volume of this series 'Civilization and Progress') been a condition essential to the freer and fuller play of greater inequalities than before in other parts of the field. If we take, for example, the domain of Politics, we shall find that it was only after private revenge was put down among the masses of the dependent population by the baronial courts, whereby the unregulated inequalities of the lowest stratum of society were levelled and equalized, that the barons themselves had a free hand in their own feuds in their struggle for inequality; and further that it was only when these feuds in turn were put down by the kings' courts, that the kings had a free arena in which to establish inequalities of rank and power among themselves.

And we have reason to believe that it will only be when 'balances of power' among the nations shall compel the creation of international tribunals for the settlement of national differences, that the inequalities both of kings and peoples will at last be reduced to equality. It is the same with private Morality. It was only after the Ten Commandments had been thoroughly ground into men, thereby putting the morality of the masses on a general level of equality, that free scope was given to the upper ranks of society to establish their own special criteria of moral judgment unchecked; and we had, in consequence, special codes and courts of 'honour' (by no means synonymous with morality) with their appeals to the duel and other punctilious observances, the breach of which entailed social ostracism, and which were believed to be necessary to estimate and judge their inequalities. And here again it may be remarked, that it will only be when publicity and the light of 'public opinion' shall penetrate everywhere and make secretly recognised immoralities impossible, that the real inner inequalities of individual character and morality will shine forth and make themselves fully felt in the world; in the same way as the real inequalities in the intellects and capacities of men will only become graded in a scale of relative values, when the purely factitious elements of wealth and position which are now mixed up and confounded with them, shall have been reduced, by a better organization and distribution of that wealth, more nearly to a practical equality.

And it is the same with Political Economy. For although in the present stage of industrial development, Rent, Profits, and Wages naturally tend, as we have seen, to inequality, still there is always a tendency, increasingly visible everywhere, for the remuneration of the lowest grades of service to become generalized, and to range itself along the line of equality. But in connection with this tendency to economic equality two points are to be observed; - first, that it is due to civilizing and humanitarian agencies, and not to strictly economic ones; and secondly, that it has the effect, as we should anticipate, of giving freer scope to the higher grades of industrial functions to blossom into still more striking inequalities. Already there is a tendency for the most ineffectual workers of the lowest class to have given to them as their right a 'bare subsistence' wage, which in its way may be said to be the lowest and crudest form of equality; and now the cry is going up for a 'living wage' for all workers whatever above this 'bare subsistence' grade, and is already within measurable distance of realization; while pari passu with it, Trades Unionism is everywhere gradually raising by its own efforts, as well as by political pressure, the level of equality in all the skilled trades.