natural growth and decay. Our whole economical system is a kind of organism with a life and growth and mutual relations of parts, and as such it cannot be suddenly changed. Moreover, it rests, as before stated, on existing human nature, which no one imagines can be suddenly or greatly changed. Society, as a whole, is also an organism in a fuller sense of the word; it changes, but changes slowly. The State is also an organism which changes, which in modern times enlarges its functions slowly and naturally with the growth of civilization. Now we have seen that the Collectivist programme implies, when accomplished, a total revolution in the State, in Society, in private life, and in the existing economical system, a revolution to effect which social evolution asks centuries, working by its usual natural methods, but which impatient Revolutionists and Collectivists in general expect in a generation. At any rate, few seem willing to defer the Socialist millenium beyond A.D. 2000, any considerable postponing of the date seeming to take away rapidly from its sustaining and stimulating power.

The three revolutions, economical, political, and social, could all be decreed. The question is how far, with substantially unchanged human nature and dispositions, they could be made effective towards their aim; and the certainty is that the attempt to make them so would bring chaos, and confusion worse confounded, until human nature rose in revolt against the impossible thing.

There are no doubt some Collectivists who disclaim revolution, and who do not expect their programme to

be fully realized for generations. And these evolution Collectivists are very much wiser and more practical than the others. But if the conclusions we have come to be correct, there are certain portions of the system which can never be realized, being essentially impracticable, and certain portions that would be bad for the majority of the working classes. If, then, the evolution Collectivists throw those parts over, or get rid of what Schæffle calls "the critical blots" of Collectivism, they would become practical State Socialists, and could work in line with Radicals or Tories, so far as these respectively take up and advocate Social Reform or practicable and beneficial Socialist measures.

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CHAPTER IX.

PRACTICABLE STATE SOCIALISM:

(1.)-LEGISLATIVE.

ALTHOUGH the main argument of the Socialists, that all wealth is the product of labour, and should therefore belong to the labouring classes, is fallacious, and although the remedies of the extreme Socialists for admitted social ills are either impracticable for the most part and pregnant with social chaos, or where they would be practicable would not be beneficial to the working classes or the community, it does not follow that the Socialists. have got no case, nor that there are not real remedies for real social evils and injustices; remedies slower and less heroic than those prescribed, but more sure and lasting. I believe they have a case, and that there are such remedies.

The strength of the case of the Socialists lics. undoubtedly in the fact that the Land and Capital, the two great requisites of production, other than labour, have, as a fact, got into the hands of comparatively small classes, and out of those of the large labouring classes, and with this result as respects their relation to capital, that they are obliged to accept

wages reduced by employers' profits composed mainly of interest and of wages of management rated as large as interest; that these labourers' wages in many cases, and still more the wages of common or unskilled labourers, tend to the Ricardian minimum or the smallest amount that will suffice to support the labourer and his family until such time at least as the children's labour can assist; that from the uncertain and changing circumstances of modern manufacturing industry in particular, which produces for an indefinite and shifting, but world-wide market, only the best labourers can expect to get constant and regular work, while even of these many may be thrown out by new labour-saving machinery, changes of fashion, or a commercial crisis; that from these different causes there is always in existence what Marx called the "reserve army of labour," a phrase which i describes the sorrows of their situation, being only partially employed, and the remaining time anxiously idling while subsisting on siege allowance from their society's funds, sometimes on the public charity or benevolence; that besides and beyond these at the bottom of all lies a mournful multitude of men and women and children, the certain result and product, predictable with scientific precision, of our whole individualistic and sauve qui peut system, who can get no work save of the most casual kind, not to speak of the considerable number who have no particular intention of working, being indeed mostly unfit for any work; who, having been born in a destitute condition, and never having had the chance to learn an honest calling, took naturally

to the evil ways of their parents, to thieving, begging, or loafing, which they still follow, there being in fact no other courses at present open for them.

The monopoly of the land in like manner leads to the worst, though not to all, of the above evils. It led to them before the capitalistic system came into being, and it still leads to them where it exists and where agriculture is the chief industry, as in Ireland and parts of Scotland. If the people are too numerous, the rent competitively determined might conceivably amount to the total produce, deducting only bare subsistence, in which case the system would be barely an improvement on slavery or the corvée, save in its presenting the semblance of freedom. In this case rents would be identical with profits, as described by Ricardo and Marx, namely, all above bare subsistence, in the one case, of the tenant, in the other of the wage-earner. This, however, does not apply to rents in England, because in England large farming with large capital is the general rule, and the landlords can only appropriate what is above the line of average profits (surplus profits). But it has been the case, and without interference tends to be the case in countries of small tenures, as in most parts of Ireland and in some parts of Scotland and Wales-which is the one main reason why the Land Question is there more important than the capital and labour question. Happily, however, the Land Question in Ireland, where the evils were worst, is in a fair way of being settled in the only practicable, and, on the whole, satisfactory way, by the conversion of the occupier into the owner, though land legisla