ment, while within a comparatively recent period, or since 1870, there has been legislative interference between landlord and tenant in Ireland, to fix rents in the interests of the tenants, and to narrow the landlords' rights; in fact to narrow the sphere of socalled Free Contracts, and this kind of protective State Socialism, this interference with, and restriction of, freedom of contracts, is likely to increase, as well as the State Socialism involved in the extension of the States' functions in the sphere of industrial undertakings, the housing of the poor, the provision of free education, etc.

It is partly from the extent of this tendency, that extreme Socialism or or Collectivism derives such strength and plausibility as it has. This species of Socialism which implies collective ownership and cooperative labour, it should be noted, is essentially a modern thing, which could not have been conceived before the great industrial revolution of which it was a direct result. Collectivism contemplates the collective ownership of land and capital (chiefly the latter), and production on the great scale, which last was the result, and the essence of the industrial revolution. Before that event there were very few great capitalist employers with whom there could have been a quarrel as to the division of the product. The worker, in general, owned his own small capital, the necessary instruments of his craft, and he was independent of an employer. Socialism relating to the land, or agrarian Socialism, there always was, as well as a sort of general and intermittent quarrel between rich and poor, but there were few great capitalists

outside the commercial class, and comparatively few cases in which the labouring classes could point distinctly to any one but the landlord, or perhaps the small dealer who had given them credit, as having made a profit out of their labour or their necessities. It was otherwise when the artisan portion of them were compelled from want of the necessary capital to sell their labour to the great capitalist employer for so much a day or week, when this sum was in general, as economists affirmed, not much above bare subsistence rate, and when they saw the master, who not long before had been on the same social level as themselves, grow rich in consequence; for they did not care to distinguish the cases where the riches might have been more due to his business genius and energy than to the exploitation and under-payment of their labour. Here was always matter for dispute, and often real and great grievances on the side of the workers, and from this new situation was born the standing quarrel between Capital and Labour, which fills the whole century, the interferences of the Legislature on the side of Labour, Trades Unionism, which tries to strengthen its hands; and the new Socialism, which seeks to put an end to the feud by the abolition of the individual capitalistic system, and the replacing of it by the collective. ownership of the State.

The new Socialists, the Collectivists, will not honour with the name of Socialist any one who does not accept the whole of their programme. The half-way systems and measures will not do. They say, in fact, that they are even mischievous as tending to prolong the present system of industrial anarchy based on

spoliation and competition. Co-operative production will not do, even if State-aided. It would prolong the reign of competition, and the competitive system must wholly cease.

Collectivism is, they say, the only system that is thorough-going, coherent, and logical, as opposed to the different partial stop-gap systems,-co-operation, legislative interference, etc.,--which would be either wholly futile, or barely temporary palliatives. As opposed to the existing system, it is the only one at once rational and founded on justice. The land and the mineral wealth beneath it, should evidently belong to all. They were Nature's gift to the human race, no more intended to be appropriated by a few than the common sunlight, air, or water. And in like manner as regards the instruments for the production of the means of life. In former times, the land did actually belong to the community, and in a time not remote the instruments of production did belong to the workers. It is not so now. The agricultural labourer on the land has become divorced from ownership: the labourer in the towns no longer possesses the instruments of his craft. He is dependent on the will and the employment of another for his livelihood. The capital which enables the capitalist to employ him, moreover, is itself the result of the spoliation of labourers past and present. These are great evils, for which Collectivism is the only remedy that would be at once just, efficacious, and that would bring finality with it.

Moreover, it is in harmony with existing facts and steadily growing tendencies all pointing to it. The State already occupies, to the general advantage and

satisfaction, a portion of the field of enterprise and industry, within which competition is abolished. Let it occupy the entire field. It already regulates, and it tends ever more and more to regulate, the industries it does not occupy which are carried on in factories, mines, and workshops. Let it put an end to the evil necessity of regulating by substituting its own action for the private enterprise that requires so much regulating to protect the labourers or the public. Let it organize all the necessary labour as it already does a part, and let it apportion their shares to all according to the rules of justice.

II.

SUCH are the two kinds of Socialism that chiefly concerns us, the one begun and extending, the other existing only as aim and ideal. With respect to this second, or Collectivism, which aims at extending and universalizing the first, or State Socialism, as the State may not have the will or desire to go so far, or not to do so at once, or soon, we are led to a further division of Socialists into the Revolutionary Socialists, who aim at altering the existing State by getting the control of it by violence, and thereafter animating it by their own revolutionary spirit in order to effect their purposes; and the Opportunist or Evolutionary Socialists, who think the existing State slowly improved or widened in its functions, or even taking it as it stands with its present disposition and the opportunities offered by the existing diversity of party interests, may serve to bring in Socialism by

instalments. The programme of the Evolutionary Collectivists coincides to some extent with that of the State Socialists, though the latter does not specifically aim at collective ownership, or at any more definite aim than greater justice or greater equality, whether of condition or of opportunity.

The Revolutionary Socialists, not numerous in England, but powerful on the Continent, think it hopeless to expect anything from middle-class Parliaments, composed largely of rich men, or men in sympathy with these, whose interests are opposed to the changes they have in view. They think the struggle between the rich and poor must be endless so long as the rich hold the Government, make the laws, and direct the policy of the State; and for the poor an endless struggle is endless defeat. Events or a crisis must be forced and soon. It is a question which concerns the present generation, when an opportunity arises. Force has been the great hastener of events, the sword the great severer of hopeless knots. Great movements have invariably led to the sword, and great issues have been always settled by it, not by appeals to reason, conscience, or humanity. And the great quarrel between rich and poor, capital and labour, between the dominant classes and the hungry people can be settled in no other way. The antagonism of interests is too great, the evils suffered by the many, and their sense of injustice, daily deepening, is too great, to allow them to wait. It is idle to expect the rich to surrender property or position of their own accord; if the working classes do not conquer them, and do not unite for the purpose,