To a large extent, that wrong is done, now, by means of the protective system, which interdicts the free interchange of the commodities produced in one country with those produced in another; but we are at present supposing "perfected wealthcreation," which implies the abolition of the protective system. How, then, under "perfected wealth-creation" could the rich man keep back the articles of necessity, which he cannot himself consume, from being consumed by the poor? What he might do if he were obstinately determined to deprive the poor of that benefit, would be to buy some cargoes of grain or a few thousand bales of cotton and woollen fabrics, and burn them. Or he might use every effort to get the protective system reenacted. We see no other way in which he could effect his purpose.

It may be said, "No! the rich man will not adopt those courses. He will spend his share of the increased wealth in keeping more servants and maintaining a more expensive establishment, in building palatial mansions, and acquiring more artistic furniture and works of art." Readily granted; but all this, far from interfering with the distribution among the labour-sellers of the increased wealth in question, merely explains the very processes through which that distribution would be effected. This increased expenditure of the rich goes to the increased employment of labour and to the payment of wages; and the greater the demand for labour the higher will be its remuneration. It is through this increased expenditure that the sellers of labour, whether it be labour of

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the brain or of the hand, get their share of the additional wealth that has been created. In short, the whole of that increment in the world's wealth which will result from "perfected wealth-creation without waste," will be distributed, and that distribution will be effected by its exchange with the labour of those who have labour to sell. The more of it there will be to distribute in proportion to the quantity of labour in the market, the better for the labour-sellers, for the higher will be the rate of their remuneration.

If, however, the rich, instead of expending their increased wealth on fresh luxuries, should prefer investing it in reproductive enterprises, so much the better for the labour-sellers. Not only he gets, as in the other case, an increased demand, and therefore an increased price, for his labour, but the wealth which his labour has helped to produce is not consumed once for all, as in the former instance, but becomes reproductive and is renewed again and again. Thus fresh additions are made to that capital out of which the wages of labour are paid. Clearly then, labour-sellers have a special interest in the amount of production being as large as possible, since that production must be distributed, and in that distribution they largely share.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

Raising the Poor to a Condition of Ease and Culture-Are the Results we Aim at Chimerical?

3. THAT the task of raising the poorer classes throughout the world to a condition of ease and culture is a hopeless one, we strenuously deny. That it may be a difficult one-a tedious one-that it can only be achieved slowly, gradually, partially, and with more or less of completeness-yes. But that it is hopeless none will believe who will take the trouble to trace the course of the future by the bearings of the past, and who have faith that progress will lead us somewhere, instead of nowhere. To state it broadly, the dead wall that stands between the rude peasant and the finished gentleman is poverty with its disabilities. Remove but that, and there will potentially reside in the one all the elements and capabilities of culture possessed by the other. Nature distributes her favours of congenital strength, symmetry and beauty, both of body and mind, on quite different lines from those on which society is distributed into classes, and the average infant of the poor is not inferior to the average infant of the rich of the

same race.

What the respective destinies of these infants may be in regard to future happiness, education and sufficiency of means will doubtless decide. Not that the education need be more than sound for the poor child, while it may be brilliant for the rich; or that the sufficiency of means need be more than a nega

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tion of poverty for the former, while it is affluence for the latter. The man who has enough is, in essentials, as well off as the man who has more than enough. Shakespeare is still Shakespeare whether he be read from a cheap copy or from a gorgeously bound edition. Life is rendered only a little more enjoyable by great wealth, while it is made barely endurable by excessive poverty. Of the two extremes of superfluity and destitution, the latter far more depresses man than the former raises him. To eliminate the latter is therefore a far more important object than to promote the former. A household, earning a sufficiency for physical comfort and for mental improvement, is placed under conditions highly favourable to the` attainment of the utmost amount of human felicity.

It has been alleged that a rise in the rate of wages generally leads the recipients either to increased intemperance or to increased idleness. This is only true in exceptional cases; for instance, when the rise has been great and sudden, not gradual and enduring, or when it has occurred among the poorest and most ignorant of the laboursellers; and even then only for a time, until the excitement and novelty had worn off. The general and permanent effect of steadily high wages has been in every way most salutary. Emancipation from the miserable shifts and temptations of hopeless and abject poverty generates in the man a feeling of self-respect, whence there spring in due time, the habit of self-command, the wish to advance in the social scale, and, as a consequence,

the desire for mental improvement. As a rule, it is the higher-paid artisans who swell the amount annually invested in savings-banks and thus become capitalists; they are the men who frequent reading-rooms and lectures, and whom books and newspapers are educating to the proper exercise of the voting power. Compare the badly-paid English working man of two generations ago with the better-paid working man of the present day, and we shall find that in education, manners, temperance, and thrift, the latter is immeasurably superior.

Why should not the same process be continued with the same effect? The vast and compact mass of poverty and ignorance existing throughout the world may, at first sight, seem too huge and dense to be broken up by the advance of civilisation and progress, but it must be remembered that every individual who may be rescued and detached from it forms a step towards its disintegration. There is so much less left to be done, and as our attacks make larger breaches, so will the resistance to them become feebler.

One of the mainsprings to human effort is emulation-the desire to excel. Wherever it is not either latent or obliterated, it exerts a mighty influence over the intensity of man's efforts, whether directed to the highest or the lowest objects. It is a force which exists for good or for evil, according to the purpose for which it is used. So powerful a lever should carefully be pressed into the service of the right and the true. "Onwards and upwards' is the motto of the poet who spiritualises life; of the painter who idealises nature; of the musician