CONSUMING NON-WORKERS.

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portion, to habits of evil and vice contracted in early youth and strengthened by evil and vicious associations in after-life. In other words, the mischief is mainly due to the early influence of evil example and evil precept, for which wise and good men are striving, by means of education, to substitute other influences that shall develop the good and curb the bad impulses of man's nature. In this they have already succeeded to some extent, and as they more and more succeed so shall the number of those who eat bread which they might, but do not, earn, or who, worse still, pillage the earnings of others, gradually dwindle down to the lowest point which human imperfection will allow. A consummation devoutly to be wished.

Thus we have taken a review of the four classes into which all civilised communities may be divided, in relation to the superfluity of unproductive consumers which exist in each. Omitting the consideration of wars and international rivalries of which we shall next proceed to treat, we find that there are in all civilised communities a great number of persons who are doing no work at all, others who are doing useless and barren work, and some even who are doing evil work, and that all these are being supported at the expense of those who are doing productive work. We also find that such a state of things is by no means the necessary result of man's natural condition or inevitable destiny, but is quite remediable by the spread of knowledge and by practicable improvements in human institutions. It is useful to take stock of the obstacles that impede our progress, and en

couraging to find that they are by no means insuperable. It therefore behoves all men to lend a hand in the good work of overcoming them.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wars and International Rivalries-Various Modes in which War is Injurious—Annual Expenditure on Armaments in time of Peace-Vast Number of Unproductive Consumers.

B 3. WARS AND INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES.— Every one freely admits the destructiveness, the irrationality, and the wickedness of war; but it is at the same time taken for granted that man is so constituted that war is a condition inseparable from his existence, whether in a state of barbarism or of civilisation. In other words, war is put forth as a deplorable but necessary evil. We readily admit the deplorableness of the evil, but we deny the necessity of its existence. Let us briefly glance at both aspects of the question, and inquire:-(A) As to the extent of the evil; and (B) As to its necessity. If we find the evil to be great and the necessity for it to be small, we shall at least know in what direction and with what hopes we may

steer our course.

A. The extent of the evil. The calamities of war form one of the most hackneyed of themes; and every epithet of revilement has been heaped on the system, with but few attempts at practical reform. There is no man who does not shake his head in condemnation of the wickedness of war, and hardly one who does not at the same time

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shrug his shoulders to signify his sad acquiescence in its necessity. But while the world is almost unanimous in professing a general, sweeping, and speculative detestation and deprecation of war, few people have closely analysed the subject, or carefully considered: (a) the variety of modes in which it injures mankind; (b) the constantly growing increase of the evil; and (c) the tendency of the modern military system in Europe to more and more extend the baneful effects of war over the period of peace. We shall call attention to each of these topics; for a vague impression prevails that the evils of war mainly resolve themselves into the loss of life and the extra expenditure of money caused by actual hostilities. But it is not so. They inflict other fatal injuries, less intense perhaps individually, but far more wide-spread and permanent, and consequently more pernicious to mankind.

2.

(a) The variety of modes in which war is injurious. These may be classed under three heads, viz.:-I. Destruction of life and property. Conversion of productive labourers into unproductive or destructive consumers. 3. Diversion of capital to unproductive or destructive purposes. On the first head, destruction of life and property, we need say very little, for of all the branches of the subject, this is the most obvious and trite. It is the favourite theme of poets and moralists, and it needs no effort on our part to convince our readers that bloodshed and devastation are atrocious crimes as well as unmitigated evils, unless justified by the sternest necessity. We will therefore pass on to the second head, which has

received less attention, although deserving of at least as much.

2. Conversion of productive labourers into unproductive or destructive consumers. On this topic we shall have rather more to say. It is a fact too obvious to admit of dispute that every member of the naval and military services, whether officers or men, consumes without producing. This does not convey the slightest imputation on them. They are engaged by the state to perform certain duties, which, in most cases, are efficiently, and, in some cases are brilliantly, performed, while they are, in the majority of cases, rather under than over-paid. But it is nevertheless the fact, that those duties do not conduce to the creation of wealth. True that they may be necessary for the protection of the wealth-producers, as in the instance of defensive But of the necessity of war we shall treat as a special topic; at present we are only treating of its evils. And it is undoubtedly a flagrant evil (be it a necessary one or not) that a greater or lesser number of men, in the very prime of life, should be made to withdraw from the beneficent work of production, and to exist only as consumers, at the expense of those who do produce.

wars.

In a loose, general way, these evils are freely admitted. "It is no doubt very wasteful," people say, “but a soldier must consume, for he must live ; he cannot produce, for he has something else to do; and he must destroy, for that is what he is paid for." But those who dismiss the subject in this cursory manner have not formed a definite conception of the amount of the evil and loss involved.

SMALL ARMIES OF FORMER TIMES.

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Assuming that occasional wars, and continuous preparations for war, are matters of necessity, let us at least try to ascertain approximatively what this "necessity" costs to the civilised communities of Europe. It must surely be a matter of both importance and interest to obtain some notion as to the price which civilised Europe has annually to pay for this assumed necessity, A man may deem it necessary to keep a carriage, but that is no reason why he should shut his eyes to the annual expense which it entails. We propose, therefore, to frame a rough estimate of the actual amount of wealth absorbed and consumed by the various nations of Europe in consequence of the necessity that is supposed to exist for large military establishments.

The

Before, however, entering on these calculations, there are two considerations which deserve a few words of remark. In the first place, the armies which, in the present day, are deemed necessary for defence or attack, are infinitely larger than those which formerly decided the fate of nations. drift of the prevailing system of military organisation is to arm the entire virile population of one country against the entire virile population of another. Governments previous to the nineteenth century pressed into military service only a moderate aliquot part of their people. The armies with which Turenne and Marlborough won their battles and their laurels would scarcely have been sufficient to form a secondary corps in a grand army of the present day. Armies then formed a very small, and now form a very large, percentage of the adult males of every country.