ABSTRACT

Free competition, which was the watchword of nineteenthcentury liberalism, had undoubtedly much to be said in its favour. It increased the wealth of the nations, and it accelerated the transition from handicrafts to machine industry; it tended to remove artificial injustices and realised Napoleon's ideal of opening careers to talent. It left, however, one great injustice unremedied - the injustice due to unequal talents. In a world of free competition the man whom Nature has made energetic and astute grows rich, while the man whose merits are of a less competitive kind remains poor.