For these reasons, I should recommend the Socialist to give up the idea of including, merely for the sake of symmetry and universality, the farmers in the Co-operative Commonwealth. The older agrarian Socialism will suit them better-that which aimed at equality in the main and liberty, and which secured it by planting each one under his own vine, at a convenient distance from his fellows, but not too far for neighbourly help and voluntary co-operation. This has succeeded in France, in the United States, and other countries, and it is a further development of this that we want in Ireland and parts of Great Britain, and not Co-operative Farming, which for political, social, and historical reasons, is out of the question.

Here, then, is one very large industrial province not suitable for State management, and a very large population that for a very long time must be exempted from citizenship in the Co-operative Commonwealth. The farming class of Europe and the United States are not indeed opposed to Socialism, but they will only be Socialists in their own fashion, and in the old sense. They are not, as a rule, opposed to the different Socialism of the town artisan, which aims at the control and possession of capital, only they think it does not concern them, provided it does not bring prolonged anarchy.

III.

AND here I find myself between the "points of mighty opposites," between Adam Smith and all the classical economists reinforced by Herbert Spencer

on the one side, and on the other, St. Simon, Karl Marx, Lassalle, Louis Blanc, and all the radical and systematic Socialists. The reasons for rejecting

Socialism and the Socialist solution of our social difficulties I have already given at length; it remains to justify the middle position held by showing the insuperable objections to the opposite system of noninterference in the economic sphere, of which Mr. Spencer is perhaps the most eminent living advocate. It must indeed be allowed that any doctrine proceeding from the philosopher of Evolution deserves weighty consideration, and he is wholly opposed to State intervention in the sphere of industry, whether in the way of regulation or management. He furnishes new arguments to the laissez-faire school, drawn from the general principles of his philosophy. The functions of the State, he thinks, should be minimized both in its legislative and administrative capacity; it is not its business to undertake industry at all. In the ideal Society of the far future, the functions of the State will have ceased in its legislative capacity. There will be no need of coercive law when our nature has been completely broken in or adapted to its environment: right conduct will then be done as a matter of course, and will even be pleasurable, so that laws with penalties may be dispensed with. Its administrative sphere also will be reduced to zero when industrialism shall have completely extruded militarism. There will be no army, no navy, and the Civil Service will be reduced to the smallest compass. In fact the State, if evolution only goes in the lines it should and would go,

if men would be wise and not perversely set it on the wrong track as they are evidently now doing,2the State will in time become almost a great rudimentary organ, serving only for ornamental and ceremonial purposes, and as a reminder of what it once was; but no longer necessary. It will be a great survival, merely testifying to a past unhappy history, and to unfortunate but long-forgotten human necessities.

In the future perfect social state, however, there is to be co-operation, because, as Mr. Spencer tells us in the "Data of Ethics," in that state "complete living is secured through voluntary co-operation," and the fundamental principle of distribution is "that the lifesustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by them" (p. 149), or in less abstract language, that "benefits received be proportioned to services rendered," this being the universal basis of co-operation. But that benefits be proportioned to services implies two things. First, that there be "no direct aggressions on person or property;" secondly, "no indirect aggressions by breach of contract." If these two negative conditions be observed, life will be facilitated up to a certain point. The industrial life will be complete, and industrialism, which is the antithesis. of militarism, will have its full and free sphere. Nevertheless such life would be incomplete; for "a society is conceivable formed of men leading perfectly inoffensive lives, scrupulously fulfilling their contracts, and efficiently rearing their offspring, who yet yielding to one another no advantages beyond 2 See "Man versus the State."

those agreed upon, fall short of that highest life which the gratuitous rendering of services makes possible." Accordingly, then, this incomplete life, which nevertheless complies with all the conditions of industrialism, and strictly owes to no man anything, must be supplemented by gratuitous rendering of services, in order to reach the highest life which lies at "the limit of evolution." There should be both give and take as regards these extra virtuous deeds, because they do good to both parties. The giver has a special gratification, the receiver a special good, and both increase the "quantity of life."

This complete living, and the perfect social state, however, lie a long way off, in fact countless generations. Meantime, as we stumble along slowly towards it, co-operation is necessary, and at the basis of co-operation is the eternal requisite that benefits should be proportioned to effort or services. But how to proportion benefits to services, or reward to work, is precisely where all the trouble lies. This is, in fact, the social problem. According to Mr. Spencer, two conditions must be first observed; life and property must be assured, and contracts fulfilled; while according to most modern social reformers, property and contract,-laws of property and the power of making and enforcing unfair contracts-have produced great social evils, and now prevent benefits from being proportioned to services.

The monopoly of capital in relatively few hands has made the worker dependent, and in the contract with the owner of capital, the worker is in an unequal and necessitous position which compels him to accept

what he can get, which is not necessarily a benefit proportioned to his services; while the small tenant farmer in his contract might be compelled hitherto to pay all above bare subsistence, if rents were determined by competition, if the landlord insisted on his bond, and if the law backed him up. And how do Mr. Spencer's conditions of social life under full industrialism help us here to solve this difficulty which is urgent? We are to let things alone. The State is not to interfere; not to try ever so little to redress the balance, or to diminish the dangerous incquality of property, no matter what its origin. It is sacred once called property, or once its acquisition has complied with the coarse conditions which imperfect and often selfishly made laws prescribe. Do not aggress after that. But is it not evident that laws of property and contract, the legal conditions of acquisition and ownership have powerfully assisted in bringing about our actual social situation and overgrown inequality? And that without some alteration in these and some interference of the State the evils could not be corrected? In short, on the path before us, on the way to the Spencerian millennium, we are confronted with a tremendous social problem, which has convulsed nations, which has already produced two or three revolutions and formidable risings in France, which is now agitated in all civilized lands, in Germany, France, the United States, England, which must be dealt with somehow, and we expect a great writer on Sociology to tell us how to deal with. it. In his "Social Statics," indeed, he recommended the nationalization of the land, in his "Political In