RAILWAYS AND STEAMERS 811 
We are not concerned with the solution of this difficulty, AD ve 
however, but only with the fact that since 1845 serious attempts 
have been made to face it. During the second quarter of the lune 
nineteenth century administrative machinery had been created trative 
to supervise the conditions of work in many trades and to deal Facony 
with the conditions of life in general. Henceforth account was op ag 
to be taken of the principal conditions of welfare, so far as the Fg 
poorest members of the community were concerned. At first ‘of the 
sight it seems to be a return, under new forms, to the paternal Soarly 
government of the Tudor and Stuart monarchy ; but the differ- 
ence lies deeper than in the fact that the new administrative 
bodies derive their authority from statute and not merely from 
the Crown. The new conception of human welfare is larger; 
the aims of modern officials are more ambitious. Just as we 
have learned that national wealth consists of the aggregate 
of individual wealth at least, whatever else it may include, 
so do we recognise that the aggregate of individual welfare 
constitutes a large part of national welfare. The Stuarts 
aimed at promoting definite and important national interests, 
if need be at the expense of individual interests’, while modern 
legislation aims at having a regard to all private interests— 
chiefly by giving them free play, but also, by fostering them 
when necessary—as the true means of promoting national 
interest. At no other period have such pains been taken to 
secure the healthy development, physical and moral, of the 
rising generation in all parts of the realm, or has there been oy 
such completely organised national machinery for exercising ™*""" 
a control over the conditions in which work is done. 
in ats aims 
V. FACILITIES FOR TRANSPORT. 
273. The staple industries of the country had been The de 
revolutionised by the introduction of machinery, before serious mands of 
efforts were made to bring inventive power to bear on im-/acturing 
proving facilities for transport within the country and by sea. 
The system of internal communication, both by land and 
water, had been enormously improved during the last quarter 
of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, but 
1 See v. 17 above.