and whizzing in every direction. He was deep in thought, not of himself, but of the great cause that now, after so much sacrifice, was lost again. He met Gambon going to Belleville; Delescluze only said: "Lost again. Humanity will look to another time, and, may be, another place, but the final triumph cannot be far oft. will be sufficient reward if we have hastened it." Several officers and citizens gathered around him and entreated him to turn back. He only pressed their hands and kept on his way. Delescluze had probably done more than any other man to incite the people to resist their oppressors, the conspirators of Versailles. And when they rose, he promised to remain with them to the last. He I would lead them to success or he would die in their midst. The

cause was now lost. Delescluze was going to prove his fidelity. He was in citizen's dress, and had in his hand a cane that he had carried constantly for many years. When he reached the barricade the battle was at its height, raging with inconceivable fury. But the people died as resolutely as they fought. There were no cries of pain or terror. The wounded died without groans. There was no sound but the roar, the crash, and the shouting of the assailants. The air was thick with smoke; it was stifling.

The people had been at their post in the midst of this terrible scene, without intermission, for thirteen hours, some of them for two days. They were covered with sweat, many of them with blood, and blackened with powder. The ground was strewn with splinters, balls, and fragments of shells. The gutters were flowing with blood. When Delescluze reached the barricade he was recognised by many of the people, and they greeted him with the shout of "Vive la Commune!” Delescluze responded with a single shout of " Vive l'Humanité !" took his place at the barricade and began to fire with a revolver.

The carnage was now fearful. The walls were almost battered down, and the people were falling thick under the fire of the chassepots. About two o'clock they were fiercely assaulted at every point. Exhausted with fatigue, more than half of them dead upon the ground, and overpowered on every side, the brave people, though they fought with the fury of despair, were all either killed or disarmed. Not a man, not a woman, not a child surrendered. Every one fought till the last; till the soldiers, sick of carnage, wrested their arms from them.

Late in the afternoon the body of Delescluze was found, riddled with balls and surrounded by the corpses of twenty-eight soldiers. And the next day it was announced by the Versailles Government that "the too guilty Delescluze had been picked up dead by the troops of General Clinchant."

On such men rest the best hopes of Humanity.

Am I a Socialist ?

THIS HIS is a question that all of us have had, or will within the next few years have, to ask and answer. Even orthodox newspapers say that "Socialism in England is entering on a new phase and commands attention. It has become a theory to be examined, modified, adopted or fought against." If suspended judgment be at present possible, suspended action cannot long continue advisable or safe. Those that are not for English Socialists, are counted against them; and it is folly for one, who is really against Socialism, to sit, dumb and still, while the creed he listrusts hourly gains adherents. Who will care for the petty quabbles of Radicals and Tory, when the merits of systems are being compared? Whether we like the responsibility or not, we nust face the problem; with whatever reservations we please, we nust take a side.

man's

The mainsprings of human action each party respectively determines to assume and vindicate, are (1) the self-regarding instinct, aiming indirectly at universal elevation through each struggle to elevate himself and his family; (2) the Social Instinct, aining directly at universal elevation through each man's struggle to elevate all.

There is little doubt upon which of these passions an earnest Social Reformer would fain rely. Give the first full play, and at best it is seen to involve the sacrifice of generations to perish unredeemed. The second offers immediate relief. To our moral sense self-absorption seems base and self-abnegation beautiful. But we may not prefer what we fancy beautiful to what we fear to find true.

With this thought in mind I went to the works of various opponents of Socialism. I re-read with especial care, what John Stuart Mill has written upon this subject, resolving, on the one hand, that I would not petulantly turn from the teacher to whom I owe so much, that I would not become an emotional convert with prospect of after-recoil; on the other, that if, after I had renewed my acquaintance with the economists, I could become a Socialist, I would.

Remember, I start with a desire to embrace Socialism, if I can, because Socialism promises so much. Anyone that prefers the

present condition of affairs to Socialism, bereft of its essential or adventitious drawbacks, simply wishes to retain an unfair advantage, which he believes that the ascendant system has conferred upon him and his. Few cynically avow this motive, and the right or wrong of such a feeling I do not intend here to consider. I assume that we all want to have the system that will be best for all of us. I assume the state of thought expressed in a fragmentary sentence like, “Socialism is a fascinating ideal-but-but-but—” I propose to examine the “buts," and if I can satisfactorily dispose of them, why then Socialism will remain, naked and beautiful, to serve and love.

We all pretty well know by this time what Socialism is. In order, however, to appreciate these "buts" we had better be exact. Socialism implies a recognition of the justice and advisability of allowing men at this stage of human progress to feel dependent upon the community for the necessities of life. I shall as far as possible confine myself to the principle, and refrain from discussing the limits within which it may at once be safely worked. That, if this principle can be firmly established, many of the contemporary socialistic demands must be granted, is obvious.

We have to ask ourselves (1) whether this principle is just, and (2) whether it is expedient.

We shall, I think, find that the answer we return to the first of these questions depends upon the answer we discover for the second. What is expedient for the whole human race is also fair for each separate individual. Mr. Matthew Arnold and the Times newspaper are in agreement with the Socialists upon this point, which we may therefore take as practically settled. I need not adduce quotations from these authorities. The celebrated leading article upon Mr. Chamberlain is fresh in every one's recollection In an address entitled "Equality," * delivered at the Royal Institution Mr. Arnold has enunciated with brighter lucidity similar views. If Socialism be expedient, it is also and for that very reason just.

In discussing the expediency of Socialism, I will first deal with what may be termed its essential characteristics, and the danges that are said to surround them, leaving for separate consideration afterwards the comparison we may find it necessary to draw between it and alternative panaceas. Clearly we might gain from Socialism an absence of anxiety, which if it did not make us lazy, would render our lives happier, our thoughts less trivial, our work more concentrated and better. It is essential to Socialism however, that the rights of property, as now understood, should be rudely violated; that competition for luxuries should be confined within narrower limits, that very great power should be vested in the State, i.e., as Burke puts it, "the nation in its collective and corporate character." In these essentials of Socialism many see astounding dangers which we may perhaps group under three heads as relating to (a) Population, (b) Competition, and (c) Liberty.

(a.) I do not see that Population has in reality anything to do

with Socialism. But the belief that it has is general, and arises from the fact that certain economists lay great stress upon the benefits which might attend the regulation of population, while certain Socialists make light of them. Concede for a moment all that the most extravagant Malthusians have asserted. Does this concession militate against Socialism? On the contrary, Mill, who urges the paramount importance of self-restraint, admits that "the Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil." According to him the disciple of Malthus has nothing to dread from Socialism because, he says, the origin of evils caused by over-population would, under a socialist régime, be unmistakeable; and, the origin being known, public opinion would reprobate, or legal penalties repress, culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community. It is well to note this circumstance, as, although later economists largely modify the teaching of Malthus and Mill, many persons yet cling to the dicta of the older prophets. All seem to agree, however, that in any case, future or present, when population is really redundant, the people will not and cannot understand their position, unless education and comfort inspire them with hope and fear. What save some species of Socialism can speedily confer pleasurable culture upon all? The gift is one that brings responsibility in its train. Thus, enter Socialism and exit the Population Scare.

(b.) The economists assert that competition (including the power of acquiring any amount of personal property-i.e., present and potential consumption-and many kinds of half-public propertye.g., land and money to be used as capital) is necessary to overcome "the natural indolence of mankind"; to excite men to improve themselves; nay, even "to preserve their faculties from deterioration." Without the stimulus of competition people would not, they say, take the trouble to produce enough to support a decent standard of comfort and a high condition of culture. "To be protected against competition is to be protected in idleness, in mental dulness."

This is for Socialism a gloomy outlook indeed, but Mill elsewhere maintains that:

And

"Mankind are capable of a far greater amount of public spirit than the present age is accustomed to suppose possible. History bears witness to the success with which large bodies of human beings may be trained to feel the public interest their own. no soil could be more favourable to the growth of such a feeling than a Communist association, since all the ambition, and the bodily and mental activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and self-regarding interests, would require another sphere of employment, and would naturally find it in the pursuit of the general benefit of the community. . And independently of the public motive every member of the association would be amenable to the most universal and one of the strongest of personal

motives, that of public opinion. The force of this motive in deterring from any act or omission positively reproved by the community, no one is likely to deny; but the power also of emulation, in exciting to the most strenuous exertions for the sake of the approbation and admiration of others, is borne witness to by experience in every situation in which human beings publicly compete with one another, even if it be in things frivolous, or from which the public derive no benefit. A contest, who can do most for the common good, is not the kind of competition which Socialists repudiate."*

I do not wish to quote odds and ends of Mill in the manner that some pious controversialists are wont to adduce isolated texts of Scripture in support of their peculiar dogmas. In this passage he is undoubtedly regarding Socialism as a vision of the future, and not as a panacea for existing evils. He would have denied or questioned that "the ambition, and the bodily and mental activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and self-regarding interests could, within our time, find a sphere “in the pursuit of the general benefit of the community." He objects to Socialism, we well know, upon other grounds, with which I am not at this moment concerned, but shall perhaps touch upon under the head of "Liberty." Confining our attention to the influence of competition we shall, if we accept unchallenged what Mill says above narrow our discussion. We shall put out of court the loose statements that, to dispense with it, "the whole current of human thought would have to be changed."†

We shall confess that by fostering other passions, the strength of which in human nature we observe to be remarkable, we can do away with what the economists term competition. We shall see that the "revolution" spoken of as necessary to turn a competitive into a socialistic community is analogous to the moral revolution, which turns a thief into an honest, a liar into a truthful person, or other similar feasible metamorphosis. The objection to the change is that it does not suit the temper and material welfare of the times, not that it is unnatural or essentially unwholesome. Experience tells us that we have been benefitted by competition.

Everybody extols the advantage of acting in accordance with the teachings of experience. Lawyers demand a precedent before they will advance a yard, and seem afraid to do anything that has not been done before. Political economists are somewhat lawyerlike in this respect. Their business, the substitution of science for fancy, naturally makes them captiously cautious. When a change is suggested for which they discover no near analogy in the past, they are fearful of risk. Reasons for believing it desirable weigh little with them, unless they can actually foretell the result. They have an affinity for crawling and distrust a swifter mode of progression. Their warnings are worth consideration, but though a small certainty is undoubtedly good, a grand probability with attendant dangers may be better. The question is one of comparative chances, and depends upon the odds. To gain much we must stake something.

• "Political Economy," Book 2, I. 3.

t "Some Objections to Socialism," by C. Bradlaugh.