ABSTRACT
Masterman was not just a writer; he was one of the principal architects of the first piece of legislation to introduce social insurance to Britain. Whatever criticisms have been levelled at the 1911 National Insurance Act, this was a phenomenal accomplishment. The main cause of this reputation at the time was Mastermans limitations and ill fortunes as an electoral politician that led in a convoluted way to his losing his vulnerable Bethnal Green seat in 1914. Markets may be no different in this particular from anything else if Gabriel Tarde was right to claim that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in society which does not exist. William James was after, too, but it is bewilderingly hard to design or legislate into being. In the late medieval world, William of Baskerville tells his novice Adso in Umberto Ecos novel: Imagine a river, wide and majestic, which flows for miles and miles between strong embankments, where the land is firm.
