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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 125
Is there any other sign except the alleged check
to the rate of our material growth itself that in or
about the year 1875 this country got II to the top" ?
I t has, moreover, to be considered that on d prz"orz"
grounds it is most unlikely a community would get
to the top per sattum, and then so great a change
should occur as the apparent change we are consider-
ing. The persistence of internal conditions in a given
mass.of humanity is a thing we may safely assume, and
if these conditions are consistent with a given rate of
development in one period of ten years, it is most
unlikely that, save for an alteration of external con-
ditions, there would be another rate of development in
the succeeding ten years. Human nature and capacities
do not change like that. Scientific opinion, I believe, is
also to the effect that the progress of invention and of
the practical working of inventions, which have been
the main cause of our material growth in the past. have
been going on in the last ten years. are still going on.
and are likely to go on in the near future. at as great a
rate as at any time in the last fifty years. Except. as
already said, the apparent check to the rate of our
material growth itself, there is no sign anywhere of our
having got to the top. so that a stationary condition
economically. or a condition nearly approaching it, has
been reached.
Last of all, it is urged that the diminution in the rate
of material growth. which is in question. must be due
to the fact that we are losing ~he natural advantages of
coal and iron which we formerly had in comparison
with the rest of the world. This is perhaps only another
way of saying that we have got to the top by compari-
son. though the community of nations generally has
not got to the top, and another way of saying also that
foreign competition affects us more than it formerly
did; an argument already dealt with. But the question
whether coal and ironat home are really so indispensable
to our material growth as is sometimes assumed appears
itself so important that I may be excused for specially