their holdings without too rigidly regarding the landlord's rights; while the landlords will be willing to lessen the working hours of the labourers, to inquire into and remedy their grievances, and to try experiments on their behalf at the cost of the capitalist, as well as to extend Employers' Liabilities, and make it less easy for the "corsairs of commerce," the bucanneers of industry, the great Monopolist and Company Promoter to prey on the property of the weak and unwary. It is possible, too, that the great outside interests, as the Church, Law, Literature, so far as they are independent, may throw their weight against both landlords and capitalists, as well from a sense of justice as to conciliate the Fourth Estate. It would be rather a change of policy, at least on the part of the two former, but, if not quite from considerations of justice, it may be thought prudent to be on the side of the growing power that may one day be supreme, and thus all things duly considered, the prospects of Socialism, bound up as they are with Democracy, are not other than hopeful in these countries.

In France, where class antagonism is deep, where the people are fiery and warlike, where each generation in Paris since the Revolution has been once at least behind the barricade, the introduction of Socialism may not improbably be attempted once again by the sword; a course very unlikely to lead to the Socialists' goal, unless, indeed, the new Cæsar which the resulting chaos would probably necessitate, should be imbued with Socialistic sentiments, and should try to realize part of their programme.

In Germany, where, though Socialism is widely

spread, the existing State is strong, and, largely impersonated in the Emperor, reposes on the national affections, Socialism will be slowly introduced by the Emperor and his Chancellor, or by their successors, in accordance with the traditional policy of the Hohenzollern monarchs, since the time of Frederick the Great, to favour and protect the people whose strength and courage are so necessary to the existence of a great military state. There the sovereign is a power above the middle-class and the landlords. He has the will, if not the power, to do justice between the antagonistic interests, and he is friendly to the working-classes. The power of the great middle and monied class in Germany, though considerable and growing, is much less than it is in England or America; less even than it is in France; and accordingly it is probable that the qualified Socialism that the late Emperor and Prince Bismarck have so persistently pursued will be realized eventually by the State itself in spite of middle-class opposition. State Socialism, much farther than would be possible in England, would be suited to a people that already has the species of State Socialism implied in a nation in arms, periodically withdrawn from industry and supported during the time, by the national taxes.

It is more difficult to offer any forecast as to America, the other great country where Socialism has appeared, and, as is proved by the Chicago Anarchists' riots as well as by other signs, is making way. As a fact, many of the labourers are dissatisfied with their condition, and many in the middle class are aggrieved by the corruption of the great corporations,

by the spread of vast monopolies, "Syndicates,” and "Trusts," while the comparatively low level of political morality makes legislative reforms difficult. The Capitalist has in America developed into colossal proportions. The richest men the world has seen since the latter time of the Roman Republic are there. Capitalism has most fully flowered, has reached its highest development there, and there is only wanting a hungry people, joined to a greatly dissatisfied one, to have all the elements of an early explosion prepared. When we add that society in America was tolerably homogeneous less than a century ago, that even in 1835, when De Tocqueville wrote his "Democracy in America," it presented marked equality of conditions, and that it has now arranged itself into the hierarchically graded form of Western Europe, with a mighty plutocracy at the top of the pyramid, a rich middle class below, and a proletariate at the bottom, there are not wanting causes of apprehension. Happily, the wage-earners are as yet well paid, though prices are dear, and the lowest social stratum is not as yet large.

But Socialism and Socialistic theories are spreading, and unless there is legislation in behalf of labour there may come convulsions in America as soon as or sooner than in any other country: because the American people, like the French, are warlike and spirited, as they have shown by the two tremendous wars within a century, the first for Liberty, the second for the Union. That the majority would be ready to fight for Justice if they thought themselves treated

unjustly, there cannot be a doubt. Then the generality are very intelligent, education is diffused, and every one reads at least the newspaper. Moreover it is a country of fast Evolution. The slow steps of social evolution in the Old Continent are quickened. Parts of the process are abridged. Events come to a head sooner. On all of which grounds I should look for the Social Question to be brought to an earlier issue there than elsewhere.

It need not necessarily be a violent issue, as the people are fertile in social resources, ingenious and unwearied in making social experiments, Communistic, Mormonistic, Co-operative. Moreover, American economists and social thinkers have taken up the question betimes, and there is no branch of philosophy in which they have shown more ability and originality than in social speculation. They are now doing their part which will be an important one in mediating between capital and labour, and by criticizing both Socialism and Political Economy they may produce light that may enable their country to go on in the path of social progress without social convulsions.

III.

It remains to mention a peculiar kind of Socialists, if such they can be called, who are not known at all in England, but who are determined and formidable in France, and who exist all over the Continent as well as in America. These men are revolutionaries, and something more. They will march willingly with the violent revolutionary party to the destruction of

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existing States and existing Governments; but they will be no party to the raising again of any Government, or of anything in the shape of the State, because they are convinced of the incurable viciousness of all Governments, existing or possible, and of the State in all its forms, autocratic, oligarchic, democratic. The State and all its institutions and laws are evils : Better it had never existed. It has always been worked in the interests of the few to the hurt of the many. It has always by its laws repressed liberty, by its institutions handed over the poor to be dominated by the rich. The effect has always been the same for the greater number, whatever the form of the State. Let them all be destroyed and all go down together, and let them never again be restored. There must be no Central Government: even no local Government, no public authority whatever-not even the policeman. Let all authority and law be destroyed; let us return to Rousseau's State of Nature before civil society and Governments existed. No aggregation of men greater than the "Amorphous Commune" is wanted, and no laws in it. Equality in the commune, full liberty and no authority, is the ideal. Work, presumably, is to be done, and cheerfully; for the co-operative society in field and factory is shadowed forth as the pleasing picture when all Governments are subverted. One thing they deem certain if we once get back to the State of Nature, if we could begin again, human society would never travel in the same fatal lines as it has done; it would neither have property nor the legal family, and if all authority were prevented, the State could never again come into being to re-create them; there would then