Now, no doubt the intervention of a body of this kind might obviate some of the difficulties on which we have just been dwelling.  It might lead to the removal of some directors of labour who were not only relatively inefficient, but were positively and notoriously mischievous; but it would introduce difficulties greater than those it obviated.  For while the industrial officials would, in exact proportion to their efficiency, embody the special expertness peculiar to a gifted few, the political officials, in proportion as they represented their electorate, would embody the preponderating opinions and the general intelligence of the many.  The political officials, therefore, could, from the very nature of the case, never represent any ideas or condition of knowledge which appreciably transcended or conflicted with those of the least intelligent; and the logical result would be that no industrial improvements could in a socialistic community be initiated by the highest intelligence, if they went beyond what could be apprehended and consciously approved of by the lowest.

And here again, though our estimate is only general and speculative—­for it deals with a state of things which at present has no existence—­we can turn to historical facts for illustrations of its substantial truth.  For example, if in the days of Columbus all the capital of Europe and the control of its entire labour had been vested in a government which represented the all but universal opinion of all the western nations, the discovery of America would have obviously been beyond the limits of possibility.  It was rendered possible only because Columbus secured two patrons who, resembling in this respect far-seeing investors of to-day, dared to be original, and provided him with the necessary ships and control over the necessary labour.  Or let us take the case of the iron industry of the modern world.  This industry, in its vast modern developments, depends entirely on the discovery made in England of a method by which iron might be smelted with coal in place of wood.  The completed discovery was due to a succession of solitary men, beginning with Dud Dudley in the reign of James I., and ending a century later with Darby of Coalbrookdale.  Practically these heroic men had all their contemporaries against them.  Public opinion attacked them through private persecution and violence.  The apathy and vacillation of governments left them without defence; and had governments then represented public opinion completely, and had also controlled all labour and capital, the discovery in question, which was retarded for three generations, would in all probability have never been made at all.  Arkwright’s experience with regard to his spinning-frame was similar.  His epoch-making invention was in danger of being altogether lost, because the general opinion of the capitalists of his day was against it; and if all capital had been vested in a representative state, to the exclusion of the far-seeing individuals