But  complete  as  this  victory  was,  it  was  soon  found  that  laissez
/aire  was  not  a  panacea  for  all  social  mischiefs.  Much  of  the  evil
which  afa.icts  society  is  due  to  causes  whose  effects  survive  and  are
profoundly  noxious  long  after  the  cause  has  ceased  to  be  operative,
and  even  has  been  forgotten.  The  maxim,  Cessante  causa  cessat
effectus,  is  only  partly  true  in  the  physical  world,  where  the  energy  of
a  transient  cause  may  have  permanent  effects.  The  desolation  of  parts
of  Calabria  have  been  prolonged  since  the  earthquake  of  1782  to  our
own  day.  In  the  political,  the  economical,  the  moral  world,  effects
long  survive  causes.  The  prolonged  survival  of  effects  is  the  centre
of  Mr.  Darwin's  theory.  The  publicist  affirms  that  precedents  are
valid  long  after  their  occasion  has  passed  away.  The  historian,
philosopher,  constitutional  or  romantic,  white,  grey,  and  black,
is  fond  of  tracing  present  phenomena  to  ancient  beginnings,  even
if  he  refrains  from  connecting  British  institutions  with  the  call  of
Abraham.  The  laws  regulating  wages,  the  justices'  assessment,
and  parochial  settlement,  the  old  Poor  Law,  the  new  Poor  Law,  the
Corn  Laws,  have  left  marks  on  labour  for  which  the  doctrine  and
practice  of  laissez  fair  e  is  no  detergent,  even  though  it  were  adver-
tised as  copiously  as  the  soaps  of  our  day  are.  You  cannot,  like
the  adventurer  in  the  Greek  comedy,  take  the  nation  and  by  some
magic  bath  restore  it  from  decrepitude,  disease,  vice,  dirt,  drunken-
ness, and  ignorance,  to  manliness,  health,  virtue,  self-respect,
sobriety,  knowledge,  forethought,  and  wisdom  by  a  mere  wash.
Some  of  us  who  have  essayed  remedial  measures  have  found  that
we  have  not  in  the  schoolmen's  phrase,  materia  prima  ^io  deal  with.
