business ability, and so on, it is highly undesirable that under normal conditions the community should be parasitic on a few of its members. There is always a strong tendency that way in any case; but it is not one to be encouraged if we value our own characters and those of our fellow-citizens. Rather should the Christian citizen see to it, that whoever confers an exceptional benefit on the community, as, e.g., an inventor, shall receive-not in compliments, for they are cheap, but in gold which costs something-the full value of the benefit he has conferred, as that is determined in an open, and, as far as may be, honest market.

It is asserted by Christian Socialists that private gain is a bad motive. It is certainly not less bad to obtain or desire to obtain advantages without paying for them according to their worth. Ruskin, in his "Munera Pulveris" (p. 186), mentions a district on the Continent which needed certain public works. These works were duly executed by a Company. Ruskin observes that so far all was well, and that the Company could not have done better than provide these necessary works. But there is a fly in the ointment. The Company permitted itself, as per agreement, to take a reward for their risk and labour in the form of a profit. Here was the offence. But obviously the error did not lie with the Company, a commercial affair, but with the Government (local or central), which, in view of the poverty of the district, should have provided these necessary public works out of the general taxes.

Apart from the difficulty of conducting commercial companies in general on the lines suggested by Ruskin,

one cannot imagine any self-respecting citizen, with any pride in his district or city, or possessed of any honesty at all, desiring or permitting a commercial Company -in no way beholden to the city-to effect ordinary public works gratuitously, that is to say, of course, as a normal thing, and as part of the municipality's ordinary business methods. But the fact is, that Christian Socialists are so enamoured with the beauty of the sacrifice of rights, that they are apt to overlook the beauty of performing duties, even the duty of remunerating those to whom they are specially beholden for great profits and advantages.

The fact is, that when a nation's virtues begin to decay, the decadence or absence of these virtues is accounted for by the statement that these were not really virtues at all, that modern virtues have been substituted for them, and that we have the "higher morality," an ethic higher than that to which the noblest in the world have so far attained. We are assured, e.g., that the love of the Fatherland is a narrow and egotistical sentiment, and that modern humanitarianism is now such an uncontrollable force that it cannot even begin at home. War, again, is organised murder; and sufferers from nervous degeneration, and sufferers from selfishness and materialism, describe the courageous men who can face it as "hired assassins." With the decay of the self-discipline and religious belief necessary to the existence of the Family, we find that the Family also is unworthy of us, being also "narrow," and, indeed, selfish; while with the decline of the desire to produce children, and to pay for them, the "higher" morality (which, unlike most morality, certainly cannot be accused of being a

narrow way"), declares that the production of children is "disgusting," and that if the manner thereof cannot be altered, then "perish the race"; and from remote Russia we hear that the human race will continue to drag on until the world is so moral that no more children are produced. And so it is with property. The desire to be independent, self-respecting, and just and honest to others, is on the wane. Parasitism and spoliation are in the air; and the desire to get things without paying for them (compelling others to perform this mean task) is now promoted to be the modern virtue of Socialistic Altruism; while those who object to being thus mulcted, are accused of setting up private gain as the motive of their actions.

That a man should be permitted to work for his own gain is unquestionably essential to his liberty, that is to say it is a right of his, which therefore he cannot be compelled to "sacrifice" without involving a contradiction in terms, and setting morality against morality. Christian Socialists tell us that the motive of private gain "must" be got rid of, and a higher impulse substituted. Apart from the difficulty of substituting "higher impulses " by means of Parliamentary intrigue or the dead weight of an interested majority, there is no evidence that private gain is as an impulse either inefficient or immoral. Thus, what is there base in the action of a young man who, starting in life, desires to be independent of assistance from his relatives-and still more from the State-and works with might and main to that good end? Or we may take the case of Clearly he must first

a poor man desiring to marry.

earn wealth for himself, and having married he must

continue to work for private gain, in order to bring up his children, and establish them as well as he can in the world. Or we may take the perfectly normal case of those whose zeal to obtain wealth is intensified by the desire to maintain parents or elderly relatives, or brothers and sisters. Or again a person may desire to amass riches in order to enable him to embark on some worthy though more or less costly pursuit, which in so far as it is successful may be of benefit to certain others, perhaps even to the general public. And other honourable motives for private gain could be adduced in great number and variety. Indeed so general are noble motives that one might ask whether if a man were deprived of family, relations, friends, public spirit and all objects of charity, private gain would generally speaking constitute in itself an effective motive. But we are not here so much concerned with demonstrating the reasonableness of the motives underlying the pursuit of private gain, as with emphasising the fact that the right of an individual to make a profit, i.e. to share in the public gain arising from his risk or labour, cannot be eliminated without a gross violation of Personal Liberty. If the private wealth of an individual-however great it may be-has been made honestly and without violation of the equal Liberty of others, it is not for those others to ask what his private motives were or to criticise those motives; not at any rate with the object of utilising the forces of the State for the purpose of capturing his present wealth, or of preventing him from obtaining wealth in the future.

However willing Christian Socialists may be to surrender their own political right to the obtaining of private wealth and financial independence, they have

no right whatever to abolish or prejudice that liberty on behalf of those who come after them-the legal infants and the yet unborn. Where popular desire and passion are concerned, as is so very apt to be the case when there is a question of compulsory distribution of wealth, it is far more easy to institute communistic legislation, than it is afterwards to repeal that legisation.

Before leaving the subject of Christian Socialism, it may be observed that a great prejudice against the abstract right to private property is aroused by the present attitude of social reformers on the one hand, and the extraordinary follies of a small number of wealthy people on the other. It is true there are a certain number of persons-generally rich mercantile people with a number of aristocratic parasites-whose whole life is spent in ostentation; and as regards the younger and even the middle-aged, in a sort of boisterous showing off," and our more popular journals are largely filled with elaborate accounts of their self-conscious sillinesses and wanton extravagance, to the exclusion of information regarding the upper classes in general. Naturally there is a tendency on the part of the populace to suppose that all owners of property are "snobbish " and futile. Far be it from me to assert that many of those possessed of property beyond the average do not require criticism and exposure. But this fact has been so universally and so acridly recognised, that there is no necessity to dwell upon it here. But this criticism. is far too one-sided1, and so gives a false impression.

1 It is not only one-sided, but is carried too far. Recently even such a small matter as the amount of food a lady gives to her lap-dog was the subject of a scathing diatribe in public. But we do not hear nowadays that these reforming enthusiasts go to the wage earners in certain vast