Principles of western civilisation

x1 TOWARDS THE FUTURE 437

the opening up of the international world to a condition of /azssez-fatve competition in business and commerce. It was confidently predicted, here also, that in the resulting conditions of unrestrained competition in pursuit of self-interest, economic evils would cure themselves; and that a large part of those which afflicted the world would finally disappear in obedience to the inherent tendencies of the uncontrolled competitive process, carried thus to its last and highest development in the process of international trade.

As, accordingly, this wider phase of the economic process has unfolded itself on the stage of history, principally at first under the lead of England, the tendencies that have gradually become visible in it are of great interest. Looking back over the history of the economic development of Great Britain for nearly a century, it presents a remarkable spectacle. The dissociation of what may be called the collective consciousness of the English-speaking peoples from the course of the commercial process in its international relations has been almost complete. The trader has followed the interests of commerce in all directions as these interests have led him. Where the activities of Great Britain have come into contact throughout the world with those of peoples in all stages of development, the trader has supplied to every comer her manufactured products, machinery, processes, instruction, management, and capital, on no other principle than that of the private profit of the interests concerned. In the uncontrolled pursuit of the end of private gain the capitalist or the trader has, therefore, gone inside all frontiers. He has carried on his operations under all standards of