by the State when young, by getting education at least, which will give them a chance of a career, or of getting an honest livelihood.

As to the still greater interferences of the Government involved in the undertaking of certain industries, this undoubtedly is a course that should be entered upon with the greatest caution,-slowly, tentatively, and but a little at a time; that should not be further adventured upon—until the light of experience has been gained, that is, until we have full experience, and until that experience has been fully and rightly interpreted, which, as Professor Jevons says, is the great difficulty. It is difficult to read the results of experience, from which diverse conclusions may be and commonly are drawn, and which only the mind most capable and most conversant with the special matter can be depended on to rightly read. For these and other reasons before adverted to, the State will not lightly undertake the management of any branch of industry already established. For still stronger reasons it will not undertake the initiation or creation of any industries. Nevertheless, this does not apply to certain kinds of business, those chiefly that have been or may be turned into monopolies, or are likely to be dangerous and hurtful to the public interest. At the lowest great trading corporations or combinations require extensive regulations in the public interest; if they abuse their powers for selfish purposes, management by the State, which has no interest except that of the public, may be necessary.

But the end of these things is Socialism, according

5

to Mr. Spencer. Yes, no doubt. Still there is no necessity either to go to the end full and complete, or to be in a hurry. But we are told the momentum will surely carry us to the end: "the changes made, the changes in progress, and the changes urged, will carry us not only to State-ownership of land and dwellings, and means of communication ... but towards State-usurpation of all industries. . . . And so will be brought about the desired ideal of the Socialists." I reply, we need not go to the end without a clear view of the advantages to be gained. The "changes urged" have to be first carried; nothing compels us to go on if we don't like the prospect, if we can't discern the general advantages, if we see greater disadvantages; still more if we are stopped by impracticabilities or impossibilities. We may go on, stop at any point, go quicker; all these courses are possible. There is no fatality in the matter: no necessary all-compelling momentum irrespective of the general volition. Even if we should go on to the end, it may be sufficiently far off to comply with the conditions of evolution, which, as Mr. Spencer tells us elsewhere, only demands long enough time to effect any change, however vast.

The terror is, that when the end does come, we shall be governed by an army of officials who will destroy all liberty. It will be a reign of slavery worse than the Egyptian. There will be the Inspector, with workmasters, and taskmasters. And why? Because "all Socialism is slavery." Now, as before "The Man versus the State," p. 39. 5 Ibid. p. 39

said, even if this were true it would still be a question of the comparison of the degree of slavery under the present system, with that under Socialism full-blown. The officials at any rate would not be enslaved; they would be the enslavers, the rulers; the rest would be the slaves; but at present the majority of workers are enslaved largely by their work and the necessity of working. The free are those who can live without work, or those who direct work, the landlord, the rentier, the capitalist. The officials under Socialism would be the most capable in the nation. And the question arises whether it would not be better to have capacity at the head directing than capital, which, after being gathered as often by cupidity and astuteness as by ability and saving, is passed on so often to incapacity by inheritance. If the hierarchical principle is to govern future society, a hierarchy according to capacity is better than any other, as the wise of all times, from Plato to St. Simon and Carlyle, have asserted. It is the "eternal privilege of the foolish to be ruled by the wise," as the latter has written; and society will always be restless and in unstable equilibrium, until capacity, as such, has its due influence in the State, the absence of which, more than the poverty of the poor, is the cause of the present general unrest. At present money rules in all directions. It may be in the hands of capacity, in which case it has too much power; it may be in the hands of incapacity, in which case it has unnatural power. Under full State Socialism ability would at least be searched for amongst all, and when found would be at least as

likely as either wealth or privilege to have virtue conjoined with it. The officials, therefore, might not reduce all the rest to slavery; even if they did they would have a better right to do so than any other powers. They could not, at any rate, hand us over to the rule of their sons, as there would be no hereditary succession to power. If there must be a governing class, this would be the fairest sort, as well as the most natural, and the most beneficent for all.

Thus it would still be a question of the comparison of evils, even if we were obliged to go on to the end. But, as already stated, there would be no necessity for so doing, simply because we started on the road in order to get some of the foreseen advantages or to escape from some present evils. We want the principle introduced of giving chances to capacity as a counterpoise to the great power of capital and inherited wealth or privilege, a third power to supple. ment and to qualify these, but not to supersede them. We want this because of its justice, its advantages from an economic point of view, and finally because of its necessity. And the only way in which the third power that is without capital can be evoked is by the State searching for and educating destitute capacity, as also by extending the functions of the State in the industrial sphere, in order to provide additional places for this educated ability. The first half of this can indeed be done by the voluntary effort of rich men by gifts and bequests; the second can only be done by the State itself.

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CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE SUPPOSED SPONTANEOUS TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM.

THERE are others besides Herbert Spencer who discern Socialism as the end or logical outcome of certain tendencies which now prevail or which are thought to prevail, and as all prophecies in modern times must be based on what we know of existing tendencies, supplemented by what history tells us of the course of similar tendencies in the past, it is a matter of importance to know how far such tendencies do really exist, and if they do, to gauge, if possible, their probable momentum, and to judge whether they are likely to be permanent or passing, because confident prophecies have been hazarded on the strength of certain tendencies, while at the very moment of the prophecy a counter-tendency was setting in.'

The alleged tendencies to Socialism are chiefly two: the tendency of the State to widen its functions, especially in the economic sphere; and the tendency

'As in the case of De Tocqueville's celebrated prophecy that nothing could stop the tide setting towards democracy and the equality of conditions: although a counter-tide towards a new inequality had already set in, with as a consequence of it the rise of a new aristocracy or plutocracy in all Western Europe.

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