remote chance that a Deity would be found in the whirlwind any more than in the hope that an impossible social system could be forcibly founded by an Assembly, because the Cæsar who might arise would far more likely not be of large capacity, or he might even prove a reactionary. He might find the forces of reaction too strong for him, even supposing him to have the best intentions to favour the socialist ideas, or he might be opposed to them; so that, all things considered, the leaders of the working classes would do better in pushing for reforms and practicable ameliorations in their condition through existing constitutional means rather than in putting all at hazard by attempting a violent revolution more likely to throw back their cause than to advance it.

Even by so doing it may not be possible to avoid revolution in the end; because in the assertion of the cause of the Fourth Estate revolution may come from class antagonisms, as it came in France after 1789 from the aspiring efforts of the Third Estate; but if it came in this way it would be in the natural order of things, and the responsibility for it would not lie solely with the working class, but would be shared by the uncompromising defenders of the present order. And it may be added that the only kind of revolution by which the cause of labour would be likely to make any permanent advance would be such a natural revolution, which need not necessarily be a bloody one.

IV.

WE may here sum up the chief conclusions reached respecting Collectivism, the latest scheme of an Ideal

S

Commonwealth, and pronounce a final estimate upon it. As a scheme, while partly agreeing with the St. Simonian, it is distinctly inferior to the latter in not fully recognizing inequality of capacity and frankly accepting as the natural consequences of the fact, inequality of remuneration, especially in the sphere of material production. With really fuller economical knowledge than St. Simonism, it is yet essentially weak on the economical side where it should be specially strong, and where it specially boasts of its strength.

Its criticism of capital, though partly sound, is largely fallacious. Its constructive scheme, so far as any has been given, is unworkable in parts, in others of doubtful tendency, in others, again, of bad tendency. The detached propositions which form the essence of it cannot cohere into a system. Its parts cannot be put together so as to form a whole that would work. Productive labour could not all be collectively organized, still less unproductive. Agricultural labour could not be collectively organized, though land might be collectively owned. The numerous small detached industries where not much capital is needed could not with advantage be worked by the State. There is much labour that might be brigaded, though not suited for collective action in a given place or at the same time, and the only thing to be said in favour of State organization and payment is that it would prevent private exploitation, though it would probably also open the door for official corruption and misappropriation of funds.

As regards Distribution, we have seen that anything

approaching equalization of wages there could not be without resulting in diminished production and inferior services, especially those of the higher sort. The industrial chief in particular will have to be paid liberally, or the product will be worse in quality as well as less in quantity. On grounds of justice no less than of policy, the superior manager deserves extra wages whenever the increase in quantity or quality is due to his superior energy and ability. Mere policy would dictate sufficient payment to make him use all his energy and ability, at least until new and higher motives can act upon him. Extra merit in the generality of workers, for the like reasons, would have to be paid higher, or production would suffer. More than all, the great inventors of machines and discoverers of new processes of production, the Watts, Bessemers, Edisons, as well as the great engineers, the Stephensons and Lessepses, the men who almost at one stroke make a comprehensive addition to the sum of wealth or store of material utilities, will have to be specially encouraged, or if not their country and the world will be the poorer.

We have seen, too, that certain professions, as the medical and the legal, could not be adequately or conveniently paid by the State; that the most skilled members at least would have to be permitted private practice and to charge additional fees, in the interests of the general health or of justice; that the artist, the actor, the public singer, the popular novelist or poet— all who possess an exceptional gift the exercise of which is greatly valued-could not conveniently or with advantage be paid by the State, without at least

a partial quenching of the gift and loss or privation to the public.

As respects the theory of value, we have found that it would be impossible to determine values in practice by the cost in labour-time; that even if values were so determined by the most heroic bookkeeping and arbitrary reduction of skilled labour to common labour, it would be impossible to keep values fixed; that it would be impossible to prevent market or variable values, unless the State exercised arbitrary and extraordinary powers in the extension or contraction of production and in the transfer of labourers from place to place. We have seen, too, that the Collectivists have no self-acting law of distribution, that the share of each under their supposed law would be entirely arbitrary and probably unjust.

The proposed abolition of money in like manner would be largely nugatory, owing to the existence of the labour-cheques, while the labour-cheques, in addition to their liability to indefinite depreciation, with all the evils and injustices which depreciation brings, would also be liable to evils peculiar to themselves, not specially predictable without experience, but certain in some form in so far as the labour-cheques would differ from inconvertible paper-money in general.

We have seen, too, that foreign trade would be impossible without surrendering the collectivist principle, and the destruction of foreign trade would be ruinous to a country like England. The Socialists are generally silent on the point, or, when they do speak of it, they decry its advantages, obvious as

many of them are; from a dim perception that it is a weak point in their system, though it is in reality wholly incompatible with it. Now this is a case where the working-classes of England at least should know the true doctrine, and how deeply their interests are bound up with foreign trade, without which England could not possibly support anything like her present population, and the abolition of which under Collectivism would be to the same extent injurious. The Socialists are perhaps to be excused for not seeing the full advantages of trade since even Mill, who makes the consumer the chief gainer by it, in getting cheap goods or things not otherwise procurable, represents only one aspect of its benefits, the chief being that it makes room in a small country like England with limited land for a much larger population than would be possible without it, by the exchange of manufactures for labourers' necessaries. No doubt it also enables merchants and producers to make fortunes, and rich people to get luxuries; but it also enlarges the absolute amount given to the labouring-class if not individual wages as well; so that the Socialists are much mistaken when they imagine that if foreign trade were abolished, English labour would be as effectively applied, or could support so many as at present, or support them so well. The abolition of foreign trade might not greatly affect the United States of America, simply because the United States is virtually a continent, having most of the advantages of foreign trade under the name of home trade; though even America finds it to her advantage to