CONCLUSION.

FROM the foregoing pages it will appear then that the way to a true social reform does not lead over the ruins of existing capitalism, nor that it is to be effected by destroying those institutions which have existed from times immemorial-the state, the corporation and the family-which collectively, aided by liberality, form already a sort of "socialism." Still less does social reform imply retrogressive measures in the direction of a primitive and monotonous communism. On the contrary, it is to be brought about by developing a thorough personal individualization, by defining more accurately their proper spheres to the several forms of industry, property, and income, and by fostering a healthily vigorous action and mutual reaction among them, and thus joining the utmost personal self development with the most effectual conservation of society, and combining the highest productivity of natural resources with a happily balanced increase of population. A destructive, reactionary communism, on the other hand, would lead to unproductivity, proletarian over population, barbarism, and an equality indeed, in which all would be equally unfree and equally

poor.

The leading idea throughout these pages has been that the urgent need of the present time is an awakening, at all points of the social periphery, of new forces, all concentrated towards the same point, the introduction that is of a new healthy middle class, corresponding to the modern requirements of our present advanced civil

Y

ization. We want a broad zone to be inserted between the two existing extremes of wealth and poverty, and that zone to consist of a contented, morally strong, politically ripe, and steadily increasing population. We want the greater portion of the masses to be trained up and enabled to acquire a stake in the country, and thus a sphere opened for them wherein they may qualify themselves for self government. Society indeed, if the measures we have recommended be adopted and the hopes we have ventured to express be realised, would assume in the course of time a somewhat different complexion; this however without any violation of justly acquired rights, and without any subversion of the social order. If the non-conservation of what is really bad and unjust in some prevalent social conditions be a radical measure, then perhaps this book may be stigmatized as radical. If conciliatory reforms, carried out with the intention of allaying class hatred, and winning the masses for a well-ordered constitutional life be called conservatism, then let this book be called conservative. At all events the measures we have recommended, if loyally carried out, will do all that could be done by repression, and much more, and will do it in a more peaceable and less precarious manner.

One word more. We may be asked what hopes we can hold out, in view of the social changes anticipated, with regard to the stability of the new order of things. We reply that nowhere in these pages have the existing institutions as such, nor the principle on which they are founded, been attacked, but only the excrescences and abuses which have crept in gradually and demand removal. We expect much from the spread of the cooperative associations of labourers indeed; but the cooperative system is not a crotchet with us, we regard it

as an economic development growing out of the nature of things in the present day. Economic federalism, we hold, is consistent with an uninterrupted continuation of capitalistic enterprise, founded on the principle of competition. At the same time, in its tendency to repress extreme liberalizing individualism on the one hand, and extreme equalizing communism on the other, federalism promises to unite within itself both the principles of liberty and equality, and thus to work out the destiny of the individual and the community.

Thus, without uprooting any existing social institutions, without precipitating the introduction of any additional forms of economy, we may look forward to the time when with the farther spread of knowledge and human culture social peace shall at last have been concluded, when the now contending classes shall have learned the true nature of their common interests and the mutual inter-dependence between honest labour, and property honestly acquired. Without any destructive measure a system may be gradually constructed of "a free industry in a free state," both endued with a new spirit of liberality, general culture, co-operative discipline, sound morality, and unfeigned brotherly love.

FINIS.

MAY, 1874.

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