Instead, the Legislative Enactments, over 3000 in number, which made the enclosure possible, are stamped with a vile inequity; while the Law, which had long ceased to regulate hours of work and rates of wages, now enforced more strictly the measures which prevented any combination on the part of the dispossessed to drive a fair bargain with the capitalist employer. When wheat was 100 to 150 shillings per quarter all contracts were illegal (except those between employer and employee) that were for obtaining any increase of wages or for reducing the hours of labour. Workmen meeting for the purpose of furthering such objects were liable to imprisonment; and, out of the public purse, indemnities were to be paid to informers.

"At his own door at Beaconsfield," cried Thorold Rogers, "Burke must have daily seen serfs who had less liberty than those Rohillas whose wrongs he described so pathetically and dramatically."

Not the glittering fabric of political freedom; not the Petition of Rights; not the Grand Remonstrance; not the Act of Settlement; not all the sturdy regiment of patriots; not Cromwell; not Sidney; not Chatham-none of these had spent a line or a sentence on the things that mattered most of all, It may be good for a nation to think that it is free. It is a great deal better for a nation to be so.

But as the nineteenth century advanced, when the children had given their lives that the Continental System might be worn down, when the strains of the Song of the Shirt had long been heard in the by-ways of the cities, the "Moral Sentiments" began to seem less

hallowed, the justice of the "Invisible Hand" more hollow, and the humanitarian movement launched its eirenicon. The logic of the system must not be left to pursue its own course. Competition between the owners and the dispossessed must no longer be given free play. The wheels of the Juggernaut must be velvet-swathed ; but the course of the Juggernaut could not be stopped. The work of Owen fell to pieces; the voice of Mill died away into the shadows. But the tinkering of the kindly-hearted from 1825 when the Combination Laws were repealed, through the long course of the Factory Acts, the Shaftesbury Acts, the Cross Acts, till 1912, when the sick and inefficient operatives are being compulsorily healed at their own expense, is a long and a pitiable tale.

Our task is finished; we have traced as clearly as we could the process of Dispossession, blaming as we have proceeded neither Man nor Destiny, but regretting the spirit of the Administration through the centuries, knowing that through the centuries another order might have been.

N. J. S.

CHAPTER II.

CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE.

IN tracing the process of dispossession we did not trouble the reader with the complication of detail which marked its advance during the nineteenth century. It was so far sufficient for our purpose that having discovered the nature of the Gild System and the causes of its collapse, we should only point to the new tide of development which took its rise from that collapse and broadened out into the full sea of modern industrialism. But we may now pause awhile to consider the results of this new system, to consider, that is, the Proletariate State; and to exhibit some of its necessary and more important implications.

The use of the term "proletariate state" throughout this chapter may call for some explanation. It is here used quite deliberately to designate that kind of state which is more frequently termed “industrial" or "capitalistic". The term "industrial" is avoided because of its vagueness; the term "capitalistic" for two reasons: first because its use commonly imports a confusion which it is important should be avoided; and secondly, because it is less appropriate to our purpose. The confusion results from an implied equivalence between "capitalistic" as denoting that kind of state whose economic foundation is private property in the form of massed accumulations, and “capitalistic" as denoting not the presence of property but the congestion of such property in the hands of a minority. We desire a state which is "capitalistic" in the first sense but not in the second. From this false equivalence between what is

It is a prime condition of the proletariate state that of the property within it a great majority of the citizens should own almost nothing at all; and that lacking ownership and any means of subsistence save their labour they should work under and for the few who do own. Now such a definite economic disposition of its very nature gives rise to consequences which necessarily flow from it while it persists, and make themselves felt in a thousand and one ways in the life of the state. So that having grasped the principle of it the inquirer could, almost without any recourse to observation, infer

owned and who owns it springs the notion that material progress-the increase and reproduction of property-necessarily proceeds from congested ownership, and as necessarily wanes when ownership is distributed over a larger area. Secondly, the term "proletariate" is more appropriate to our purpose. For, if, as we assert, the important thing in any state is the condition of all of its citizens, and if that state is most desirable whose institutions, laws, customs and social life best reflect and embody the activity of its citizens, whether for good or for evil-then, in discussing our present position, attention is best riveted upon the condition and circumstances of the majority of the citizens and not on those of any special or temporarily predominant section of them. If this be so, then unquestionably the condition of most Englishmen is proletariate and so should be designated. For, even if this process be not already complete, the number of those affected by it is steadily increasing; so that he who should now designate as 'proletariate' the state whose character they are determining would be looking not more than a decade ahead at the farthest. Some few, indeed, are not so affected; but it is this very contrast which constitutes the peculiar essence of the proletariate condition. By a happy providence it has fallen out that these few who possess the land and own the industries also run the government, no one caring for a democracy, however much he might admire-whether mistakenly or not—the ability, skill and foresight with which so few men control so large a governing scheme, can pretend that such a regime fulfils the least, or indeed any, of the conditions of a true democratic state, or is ever, while it remains, likely to do so.

But

with accuracy its probable operation. As it is, we have only to examine contemporary practice to discover everywhere the characteristic marks of its presence, and the manner of its evil working.

To begin with what is most familiar, let us consider the general claim for modern industrialism and proletariate industry, and examine the argument by which that claim is supported.

Now it is urged for this form of industrial organisation, as its first justification and claim, that whatever be its other disadvantages and however much we may dislike it, nevertheless it is there; and that it is there because it is inevitable. We 'could not get on' without it. A man will say: "I can see the cruelty, the wastage, the lack of correspondence to needs, I can see all this evil which the system involves, but is it not plain that without it even bare necessaries could not be procured at all? Take away large-scale production and the modern state would simply collapse and its population die off. And for large-scale production the present organisation with its centralised ownership and direction is a first prerequisite. Consequently, proletariate industry is an economic necessity of such moment that it is the merest folly to attempt its removal on the ground of its incidental disadvantages."

Such is the claim and the argument upon which it reposes.

Now if we examine, first, the essence of this proletariate industry; secondly, the proper functioning of production; and lastly, the conditions involved in that proper function