the Labour party. But too much weight must not be given to the bookstall either. The very quantity and the variety of aim of much that is printed dissipates its strength. The extravagance that sometimes marks it carries with it its own corrective. We think of a thing printed as given to all the world, but in fact only a few of the people may read it; of those who read less may attend to it. Many Americans seemed to regard the "tallest" of writing (and speaking) as only so much business to be got through for the cause in hand, and not to be taken too literally. Behind all is the common sense of all the people, and the older they are in political experience, the more wary they become. Nearly twenty years ago, Fawcett prophesied that if Socialism in the United States continued to advance with the same rapidity that it had lately shown, the day was near when it would control the legislation of the country. It has been speaking and writing ever since, and that day appears to be still distant.

CHAPTER XI.

THOUGHTS OF THE MAN IN THE STREET.

It may seem labour in vain to discuss the possibilities of the Socialist ideal, since the most intelligent Socialists admit that its complete accomplishment is far distant, some saying that it will take generations, and others centuries, before men are ready for it. Yet the inquiry is a practical one, for it influences the aspect in which you will regard remedies that are now proposed, the length that you will be ready to push them to, and particularly the direction that you will give them. When you are treating the patient it is important to know whether his constitution only wants strengthening and improved tone, or whether his case is so desperate that you must, at the risk of his life, adopt a kill-or-cure method. Many now become Socialists without in the least knowing where they are going to.

There has been much philosophical discussion upon this subject, and many learned arguments concerning the modified attitude of the newest school of political economy towards it. Twenty-one pages of one number of The Fortnightly Review were occupied while I was in England with an erudite answer by Professor Karl Pearson to Mr. Kidd, in which evolution, Darwin's theory, intra-group struggle and extra-group struggle, physical selection, and panmixia were deeply considered, and the argument as to panmixia was represented symbolically by a series of equations. Such are the problems that lie at the core of this subject. I desire, however,

rather to suggest some of the difficulties that occur to the man in the street, and some of the reasons that lead him, though perhaps at first attracted by the humane spirit of Socialism and the grand prospects that it holds out, to see that it cannot become a fact.

A

The first, and indeed the main, postulate of the Socialists is that the State should own the land and all the instruments of production and exchange. This was resolved unanimously, though inadvisedly, as the lawyers say, at the Norwich Conference. I never heard any suggestion as to how the State was to get these except by the spoliation of the present owners, and this course is approved by representative Socialists. This would mean revolution. Further, I never heard or read of any plausible justification for such spoliation. People have bought and improved, not only with the sanction of the present law and industrial system, but at its invitation; for men have been encouraged by their fellow-men to save and invest for centuries. Labour leader told me that the people now were not bound by laws that they had no voice in making. This doctrine would upset all continuity of national life, and reduce a State from being one entity, with generation knit into generation, to become a series of dissolving crowds inhabiting one part of the earth's surface. But, besides that, England has had some popular government for sixty years at least. It has had household suffrage and the ballot for thirty years. In the United States they have had popular government for a century. Most of the existing conditions of property-holding have taken effect within the last thirty years, either by purchase or succession. New conditions are happening every day. Admittedly a large majority of the people at present approve the industrial system now in force. The plea, therefore, that a people are not bound by laws not of their own making is unsound in theory and untrue in fact. The proposal to tax away gradually only adds an element of cunning to the spoliation. It may be that Socialists are impelled to such a proposal

by the impossibility of finding the funds to purchase honestly-for that is impossible; also by its incongruity to the new departure; for what would be the use of giving men money to-day when it is all to be taken from them on principle to-morrow? But such tactics would produce even more serious consequences to the spoilers than to the spoiled. What would be left fixed after such an unsettling? Where would public faith be in the new community? It is a principle with some professors of the creed to allow the future citizen to keep and save what they term "the rent of ability," the fees paid to a Paget for operating, or a Patti for singing. But for how long? Only till a majority again voted away these personal accumulations. The effect of deliberate national dishonesty upon a people's character is lasting. An individual may do an unprincipled act and recover himself. Not so easily a community.

There is another consideration that suggests itself on the threshold of inquiry. Voluntary association for Socialist enterprise can at any time be undertaken by those who believe in it, and be backed by the support of philanthropic people outside. There is plenty of room to try it in England itself; or vacant spaces, apart from human settlement, are still to be readily found the world over. The experiment can be made upon whatever lines appear to be best from time to time to those who undertake it. If successful, the example would be followed. But any such attempt is repudiated by the Socialist. His object is, having got possession of government, to compel all the people to submit to the proposed industrial system. The fact that nothing like a large community remaining subject to such a régime has yet been seen in the course of the world's history, makes the man in the street sceptical. But the success of the scheme is assumed by its followers, who are thus led to regard the present condition of society as hopeless, and any means useless for reforming it, and justifiable for upsetting it. If difficulties are suggested, they say that

they are matters of detail that will settle themselves when we come up to them, that they for their part do not care to puzzle over the future, or that things are so bad now that any change would be for the better.

Let us, however, consider a few points. The teachers of the new system assume as its broad foundation a radical improvement in human nature-so radical, indeed, that if it could be secured we would get on very well with the present system, or with any system. Sometimes they express it that "human nature will take a new direction." Some races of men have improved in the past four thousand years; others have deteriorated. In the better races men are less fierce; when influenced (often indirectly) by Christianity, they are what is termed more altruistic, more feeling for suffering in others. It was Christianity that gave charity a world-wide application. With the Jews it had a limited scope; among the Greeks and Romans it did not exist. But it is surprising how little we have got away from our human nature in all that time, and in particular from that cardinal instinct in it that makes us first regard ourselves and those near to us. Good men have ever struggled to curb this impulse, with more or less success. In some saintly characters it is suppressed by, or concealed under, a passion for the good of others, that is with them a noble form of selfgratification. Languages die, civilisations pass away, religions decay. A thousand years passes over the world, new forms of life, manners, and literature appear, and all the while man remains each with the impulse fixed and rooted deep inside him to take care of himself and his children. And it would be adopting the tone of Joseph Surface or Pecksniff to affect to condemn this impulse as all bad. It is old Nature's way of preserving men and improving the world. It wants regulating and elevating, not extinguishing. Extinguished it will not be, whatever social state may be imposed on men. The ship is anchored to it, and however the currents may make it swing first one way and then another, it