common use and enjoyment, and under common management, so far as management is needed: and the labour required to keep them in good condition has been imposed or provided by Government. Roads, and commons for recreation, come under this head: also seas and large rivers, in which navigation and fishery have been common to all, under governmental regulation; also forests to a considerable extent. And it is to be noted that, in certain important respects, the need of systematic governmental intervention to modify man's physical environment tends to grow as the cultivated area of land extends with growing civilisation: as in the case of interference with the natural flow of surface waters, with a view to better irrigation and drainage, and in that of the artificial maintenance of forests, especially needed on high tablelands and mountain slopes.

Further, in modern civilised communities generally, the private ownership of land is held to be limited by a general right of the community to take compulsorily the land of any individual, when required for the most economic attainment of an important public utility, at the value that it would have had apart from this public need: and in recent times this right has been exercised in very important cases, the most important being the construction of the artificial roads and waterways which have transformed modern trade and industry. It is true that canals and

railways have been largely constructed by private enterprise; but they have usually needed for economical construction the intervention of Government to give the power of buying land compulsorily and as this power has been granted on account of the public utility of the enterprise, the management of canals and railways-even where it has been left in the hands of private companieshas been placed under governmental regulation, and assumed a semi-public character. That a certain amount of such regulation is legitimate and required in the interests of the community, is admitted even by leading advocates of laisser faire. Whether governments should actually undertake the construction and management of railways is a more

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doubtful question, on which there has been much divergence in practice: still, important-though not decisive-arguments for this measure are furnished by (1) the value to a political community of facilities for mutual intercourse and rapid communication among its different elements; and (2) the economic advantage of a coherent organisation of railway traffic, and the consequent tendency of railways to fall more and more under the conditions of partial monopoly, so that many of the advantages of competition are lost to the public.

On similar grounds the business of communication by letters and telegrams has been found suitable for Government -chiefly through the economic gain that results from having the whole work done by a single organisation: and it is, in fact, undertaken by almost all modern governments. So again, the ordinary advantages of competitive industry can hardly be realised in providing for the water supply and— by modern methods-for the lighting of towns: accordingly, these businesses, in modern times, tend to assume a semipublic character, being either undertaken by municipal governments or subjected to special governmental regulation. Further, modern governments usually undertake coinage, and regulate in some degree the business of banking:-interventions chiefly justified by the great public importance of giving security and stability to the current medium of exchange.

In a wide sense of the term, these and similar kinds of governmental interference may all be called "Socialistic" in principle; since they tend to narrow the sphere of private property and private enterprise, by the retention of resources and functions in the hands-or under the regulation-of Government as representing the community. Such interference differs very much in intensity in different cases; according as Government (1) merely regulates, and perhaps subvents, or (2) itself undertakes a department of business,

1 It should be observed that so far as this value lies in the increased ease of maintaining order, it comes rather under the head of the "indirect individualistic" interference discussed in the preceding chapter.

2 For the purposes of the present discussion, it is not necessary to consider the distribution of functions between central and local governments; which will be discussed in a later chapter.

or (3) establishes a legal monopoly of the business in its own favour as in the case of the post-office in England. But the term "Socialistic" may be fairly applied to this kind of intervention, whatever its degree of intensity, if it is used in simple antithesis to "Individualistic." This meaning of the term, however, must be carefully distinguished from another-and I think more commonmeaning, in which "Socialism" is understood to imply a design of altering the distribution of wealth, by benefiting the poor at the expense of the rich. For though such effects on distribution may in some cases result from the measures above mentioned, their primary aim is not to give advantage to one section of the community at the expense of another, but to secure benefits to the community as a whole which tend to be distributed among all its members, though in a way difficult exactly to trace and apportion.

§ 4. The same may be said of much of the public expenditure that most modern communities recognise as desirable for the promotion of education, general, technical, or professional. It is evident that, so far as public funds spent on education tend to make labourers more efficient, though the labourers will be thereby enabled to earn more wages, the employers of labour and the consumers of its products will, generally speaking, share in the gain resulting from the increased efficiency; so that we may regard such expenditure as primarily designed to benefit the community as a whole by improving its production, though much of it has also an important tendency to mitigate the inequalities in the distribution of wealth. It may perhaps be objected that if this expenditure were really profitable to the community, it would be remunerative to individuals to undertake it, and it might therefore be left to private enterprise. But this does not necessarily follow; since the labourers in question or their parents may be unable to provide the requisite means, while the difficulty of making effectual contracts with the labourers or their parents, and the trouble and expense of enforcing such contracts, may suffice to render the provision

of such means an undesirable speculation for other private individuals. On similar grounds, the expenditure of public money in transferring human beings from overpopulated to underpopulated regions, within the territory of the same community, may be ultimately profitable to the community as a whole, from the increased efficiency of the labour thus transferred, although it would not present a profitable sphere for private enterprise. The conditions under which such expenditure is to be recommended, and the distribution of the burden it imposes, will be discussed hereafter, when we come to treat of the expansion of States.1

The question of public provision for education is not, however, commonly viewed in relation to industrial efficiency alone. It is widely held to be in the interest of the community at large-and not merely of the poorer classes primarily benefited-that public funds should be employed in the moral and intellectual improvement of its members generally, by the maintenance of religious teaching and worship, and the promotion of scientific and literary culture, through the means not only of schools for the young, but also of museums, libraries, and universities for adults. So far as this view is sound, all such expenditure may be classed as Socialistic in the wider sense above explained.

The propriety of governmental provision for, and regulation of, moral and religious teaching will be more suitably discussed after we have considered the general relations of Law and Morality. The promotion of secular culture might doubtless to a great extent be adequately provided for by private enterprise, if the aim of benefiting the poorer classes, by bringing about a more equal distribution of the capacities and opportunities of living cultivated lives, were left out of consideration. Still a considerable amount of public expenditure under this head may be justified, apart from any such distributional aim. In the first place, as we have already observed, the social utility furnished by scientific discoveries is generally unsaleable, except in the cases in which it can be immediately turned to account in some technical invention: 1 See chap. xviii, § 4. 2 See chap. xiii, § 4.

it is therefore reasonable that a certain number of persons who have proved themselves capable of advancing knowledge1 should receive salaries from public funds: and that public provision should be made for the costly instruments required for the effective performance of scientific research:—such as libraries, museums, laboratories, observatories, and their equipment. Again, the expenditure of money on educational machinery, to bring opportunities of good scientific instruction within the reach of children of comparatively poor parents who show decided scientific ability, may be justified by the consideration of the increased chance thus obtained of scientific discoveries and technical inventions valuable to the community at large. Similarly, the provision for literary and artistic instruction given by public maintenance of libraries and picture galleries, and endowment of teachers and students, may be expected to benefit the community at large by aiding the development of talents that might otherwise have been crushed beneath adverse circumstances. Moreover, though there is no such need of providing salaries for artists and men of letters generally, as we have seen in the case of savants, since the utility of artistic products can be appropriated and sold; still, apart. from any special consideration for the poor, it would seem that the advantage to the community of the best attainable appliances for artistic and literary instruction and study has too indirect and remote a connection with the interests of individuals to be safely left altogether to private enterprise. Up to a certain point, then, in all these cases, the benefit of the community as a whole may be taken as the primary aim of the intervention of Government; the advantages accruing from this to any particular section of the community being secondary though not undesigned.

§ 5. Finally, we have to observe that governmental inter

1 I do not mean physical science alone: the general argument used would support the endowment of any branch of knowledge which may reasonably be expected to furnish "fruit," beyond the mere gratification of refined curiosity. Whether the mutual relations of the different branches of knowledge are such that none could be properly excluded from the benefit of this argument, is an interesting question which I have not space to discuss here.