must wait for a more convenient season. This, in itself, is unfortunate for two reasons. First, for the sake of the two thousand five hundred men employed at a dollar a day upon railway construction for half the year, and those dependent upon them, and secondly, because the completion of the system to Port-aux-Basques, only about fifty miles across the Strait to Sydney, the terminus of the Inter-Colonial Railway, would naturally promote travelling and perhaps even make Newfoundland the haunt of American tourists, as Cape Breton is at present. No finer sporting country exists, although the salmon are not of very great size; but the absence of all hotel accommodation has prevented any influx of strangers, and even the magnificent deer-shooting is practically a thing as yet unknown to English and American sportsmen. The scenery is beautiful, and the climate during the summer season salubrious. Indeed, the climate of the island all through the year is much better than it is generally represented. For bettering her condition, Newfoundland must look to the introduction of foreign capital for the efficient working of her valuable mines, lumbering, and paper-pulp industries. The more tourists that can be induced to visit the island for sporting and other purposes, the more money will be left behind for helping the people through the winter. The letting of rivers for fishing purposes, and the establishment of game preserves is only a question of time, when once the attention of tourists is directed to the attractions of Newfoundland. And when, besides, the conditions under which the fisherman pursues his main avocation are improved, the revolt of this colony will die out. The native Newfoundlander is not ill-affected to England, though an imported demagogue here and there may be. He has had a very bad time in the past, having been in serfdom to the merchants for so long. But now that the merchants have found that the socalled supplying system does not pay, an economic reorganization of the staple industry of the island is being automatically brought about which must be to the ultimate advantage of these down-trodden toilers of the sea.

ΑΝΟΝ.

NICHOLSON'S "HISTORICAL PROGRESS

AND IDEAL SOCIALISM." 1

PROFESSOR NICHOLSON expresses a misgiving as to

whether an economic subject "can be made sufficiently popular for the purpose" of an evening discourse. But certainly nothing more popular than this exposition and criticism of "current" Socialism can easily be conceived. "Distrust the methods that are popular, the results that are not popular," is a suggestive principle for the scientific treatment of questions in regard to which every one is interested, and no one altogether ignorant. Professor Nicholson has, apparently with deliberation, adopted a method which may be described as the converse of what would appear to be the "more excellent way." The result has been that his discourse has been pronounced by competent judges to be at once "brilliant," and a "mass of sophistry." The judgments are quite compatible: it is just where the Professor is most brilliant that he is least true. The official economist" has been often taken to task for ignoring the socialistic movement: it might appear, after this "pronouncement from the chair," as if he would have been well advised, for the sake of his reputation, to persist in ignoring it: his attempt to understand it is, at any rate, sufficiently ludicrous-not to say worse. Professor Nicholson's conception of Socialism is not merely obsolete and arbitrary: it is not even consistent. His method is, indeed, simple to a degree: collect from whatever source you can all the ideas which may seem fatal to progress, put them into the most absurd and extravagant form they can bear, and call the whole the Socialistic Move

An Evening Discourse, delivered to the British Association at Oxford, in the Sheldonian Theatre, August 13, 1894, by J. Shield Nicholson, M.A., D.Sc., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh. [67 pp. Crown 8vo. 18. 6d. Black. London, 1894.]

ment. The result is that the Socialist cannot recognize himself for a moment in the "images" and "reflexions" of the Professor. The lecturer need not have regretted. that no aid was to be obtained "from slides or specimens, from flames or explosions: his power of producing illusions is sufficiently "brilliant;" and if he has succeeded in his treatment of the "popular myth of the future," it should be remembered, to the credit of his ingenuity, that the "myth "-as he himself describes it with unconscious irony is entirely his own invention.

The Professor seems afraid that "Socialism" may be regarded as an "historical category," and may find its explanation and justification in a changing state of things. Otherwise, his opening speculations on "the great wave of altruism" do not seem particularly relevant-at least, not till the reader has had further experience of what the Professor takes for relevance. "If altruism means brotherly love, it can hardly also mean militarism," is considered by the lecturer to be a triumphant observation. The "coal strike" is also made to do duty for a "sign" of "no change" in human nature: we can, therefore, conclude, says the Professor, that we may use the "interpretation of the past" for the "anticipation of the future;" and if Individualism has been the "soul" of progress in the past, it will continue to be so in the future: ergo, Socialism spells

ruin.

It would be quite impossible, within the space of a review, to do justice to the mass of fallacies which underlie this "conclusion;" and the Professor seems to feel that the "effect" requires the obscurity of metaphor to be entirely successful. Mill pointed out the main fallacy a long time ago: individualistic motives only appear to be an exhaustive account of economic activity, because the present arrangements of society —which, it is often forgotten, rest upon certain artificial institutions, and are no more "natural" than the fact that, if two men are selling the same thing in the same street, they will try to "cut each other out"-favour the bias of individualism as against co-operation. Facts prove that wherever the individualist motive is relied upon, pure and simple, there is no

guarantee either for the character of the result or the gain of society. The modern socialist need not wait for a "wave of altruism" he simply desires to open up the channels for obstructed forces. He is no doubt convinced that examples of co-operative effort will gradually give play to a power and instinct in human nature which Darwin has, after all, asserted to be more persistent and enduring-to say nothing of its higher utility-than the "predatory" appetites to which the actual organization of society gives an artificial stimulus and a quite unnatural supremacy. But it is sufficient for his purpose to reply granting that Socialism, in order to become the dominant tendency in modern society, implies a "superior morality," any particular application of Socialism can and must be grounded on the demonstration that it is a superior method of business. If it is not good business, if it does not raise the standard of character and efficiency required for good business, then the Socialist is ready to admit that he has "no case." Professor Nicholson seems to think that Socialism is mere philanthropy, though strangely enough he credits it with the further idea that its path only lies by the way of "confiscation." Just as it suits the argument, the Professor now confounds the modern Socialist with his continental ancestor, or, indeed neighbour, now with Mr. Henry George, with either of whom he has as much in common as the London County Council has with the ateliers nationaux of 1848. This is being "popular" with a vengeance.

Professor Nicholson is, of course, leading up to the conception of the Socialist, with which Mazzini has familiarized us, as the ultra-individualist; in the Professor's more popular language, as the robber and pillager. This is, of course, as true of one kind of Socialist as it is ludicrously untrue of another kind, and the only kind which is making any way at all, either in theory or practice. Curiously enough, the Professor is at pains to show that human differs from animal progress in the substitution of co-operative for competitive propensities and practices. (He cites trade unionism as an example of the "animal" kind— but let that pass, it is sufficient to mention it). That it is bad

science to apply the conceptions that are appropriate to one science to a science that is essentially different, and that "in the industrial world, as in other departments of nature, we must proceed step by step and fact by fact, and not by the easy method of anticipation to analogy and desire”—all this is true enough, and can hardly be stated too often; but what then? I should have thought that the modern Socialist is the one person who above all others has recognized that the most important factor in industrial evolution is the consciousness on the part of society as a whole of something better, of an ideal that can be carried out through the desire and will and intelligence of the organized community, and that the supreme consideration of the time is the manner in which the social

struggle for existence" can be modified in the interest of "the progress of all through all." Is not this what he means by the substitution of collective and co-operative forces for individualistic and—animally-competitive tendencies? It is somewhat paradoxical that the Socialist should be singled out as the type of person who has been lured by the "vague analogies" of Mr. H. Spencer.

But, in order to explain the Professor's peculiar way of putting things, let us see how he proceeds "step by step and fact by fact;" his idea of a fact may throw some light upon his estimate of Socialism. Not having a magic lantern, the Professor begins by throwing upon the screen of the excited imagination-Socialism and Taxation. This is much more like the furious heat of the man in the street than the "dry light" of science. It is an appeal from the economist to the ratepayer. This is how the Professor describes "ideal" Socialism: it is a good example of his "brilliance."

"Stripped of all disguises, the very object of Socialism is to impose. taxes beyond the limit ever yet attempted by the rapacity and audacity of governments. Instead of a land-tax, the State is to seize the land in itself; instead of paltry death duties on capital, it is to take the capital itself; and from the incomes that pay income-tax, instead of taking a miserable eightpence, it is to take twenty shillings in the pound."