tion. A, being innocent, should live untaxed; B's loan to a foreign Government, if not his income, should be made to pay tribute to the national banker; and C should be heavily taxed for the luxury of maintaining human beings in an unproductive condition, and for keeping animals not eaten by man, who consume what might be converted into human food without doing other work than minister to the convenience or pleasure of their owner and his friends.

It

In order to widen the distance which at present divides willing workmen from the workhouse-in order to extract the greatest possible amount of usefulness from free labourers-it is indispensable that they should be constantly employed at well-paid work of a useful character. By means of trades unions, friendly societies, and clubs, working men now try to improve their condition, and to provide for the periods of old age, sickness, and death. But wise laws would render such institutions unnecessary. is a lamentable proof of misdirected legislation when the surplus sixpences of labour, instead of being securely invested in such works of public utility as would tend to multiply private employers and enhance the value of the labourer, require to be spent in neutralising the evil effects of an abuse of wealth, and in defending the supposed interests of labour against the supposed interests of capital, as if those interests were naturally antagonistic to each other. The wage-payer and the wage-earner, as individuals, may, in one sense, be tacitly opposed to each other; but socially speaking, their interests are identical, and it should be the object of legislation to constrain both parties to shape their actions towards each other in accordance with this belief. Insufficient wages is the chronic complaint of labour, and one of the mistakes the working man commits

is to assume that this disease is cured when he and his brothercraftsmen have succeeded in imposing their own terms upon the employers locally engaged in their particular trade. The good effected by strikes may be very precious to working men, but whatever interferes with the onward progress of trade injures the operative as well as the employer; and, unless some wise general law is at work in adding to the number of private employers, and extending reproductive labour fields to meet the growing demands of labour, the good effected by trade strikes can never be permanent or entirely satisfactory.

Insufficient wages is a constitutional malady, a local manifestation of a general disease requiring general treatment, as well as local application and individual attention. A trade strike is a purely local remedy, and therefore performs but a secondary part, whether for good or for evil, in connection with the complaint.

It is chiefly by the operation of wise general laws that wages can be kept abreast or ahead of the living point. What, for example, would working men gain by an advance of wages, if their employers, who make the laws, imposed such a duty on imports as would double the price of food, clothing, and house-rent? The work of legislation being as yet entirely in the hands of wage-payers, who in many instances make extensive personal contributions to the evils it should be their chief business to remove, it is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that legislation directly affecting the wage-earner should be in a somewhat backward condition. It is within the power of working men to remedy this state of things. Instead of fighting in detached bands against the individual holders of capital, trades unions would better secure the permanent elevation of the working classes and the ultimate comfort of their indi

vidual members by combining together as a nation of wage-earning men for the purpose of securing political power. With 400 Parliamentary delegates pledged to vote for the national owning and training of neglected children; for the extension of labour-fields and the consequent multiplication of private employers; for the abolition of all taxation except that on abused, misused, or unused property and privileges; and for the infusion of the commercial element into all public transactions that admit of it, the sober English workman need never sigh in vain for the bread of independence.

3rd. It is common for working men to sympathise with the views of the socialist and the communist. It may be natural, when looking at a rich man's possessions, to sigh for their distribution among the poor; and the social distance between Belgrave Square and Bethnal Green is great enough and grave enough to excite the reforming ardour of the statesman and the philanthropist. But the reckless pursuit of equality is futile. Blood, breeding, brains, and attainments will manifest themselves, in spite of all levelling laws. As well try to level down a senior wrangler to the intellectual standard of an Esquimaux, as seek to place a Rothschild in a middle position between his own overflowing money bags and the empty wallet of the beggar at his gate. The mere shifting of money from one purse to another would not provide for the material wants of an increasing population; and the dividing of large estates into innumerable small holdings would certainly not be the way to raise the maximum amount of food from a given quantity of land. It matters little to a working man who holds the land or other property of a nation. It is of the utmost importance to him what use is made of that land and that pro

perty. For example, every uncultivated acre of land tends in some degree to keep wages low and food dear. It is therefore a double grievance to the poor. And every horse kept for pleasure, or at work which could be performed by human or mechanical agency, has a tendency to produce the same twofold evil result. If it were possible to till the soil and draw all our vehicles by some me chanical power, the immediate effect of destroying our horses would be a considerable fall in the price of food, and a corresponding rise in the rate of wages, for the food liberated from the stable would be very considerable, and the general productive result of scientific husbandry would be much greater than it is at present with horse hus. bandry.

Suppose that X, Y, and Z possess an equal amount of money and 1,000 acres each of the same quality of wheat-growing land; that X lets his property in lots of five acres to two hundred tenants who cultivate the soil by manual labour; that Y lets his in farms of two hundred and fifty acres to four tenants who employ in the aggregate thirty to forty horses and as many families; and that Z farms his own property in one holding, employs the best machinery, the cheapest mechanical force, the highest skilled labour, abundance of capital, and all the assistance which science can lend him: it would be found that the latter, besides being able to raise most food per acre, would also have most available acres to cultivate. It is clear that Y would require to feed many horses not needed by Z, and that he would be obliged to build four dwelling-houses and four steadings where one would serve the latter. X would require to use many acres for buildings and fences; and though Z might have most capital floating in the soil, X and Y would have most sunk, and, in

the aggregate, most invested. Z, besides being able to bring most food to market, would have most money to spare for other productive purposes; consequently Z's mode of cultivation would be the most likely to check pauperism, and to promote the comfort of a large bread-eating town population. A wine, cotton, or tea producing country may require a large rural population; a country or district suitable only for growing cereals and the various crops used as food for oxen and sheep cannot be densely peopled in the general interests of labour. It is therefore for the interest of the wage-earning classes that every available inch of land should be cultivated on the most scientific principles, and that the forces employed in its cultivation should be mainly mechanical.

4th. One of the chief obstacles in the way of wisely distributing surplus population is the obstructive machinery of a custom-house. By diverting the wealth and energies of a people from the work of developing the natural resources of a country into artificial channels, a custom-house has a direct ten

dency to confine capital and population within certain localities, not necessarily the most favourable for their increase. It also fosters national, sectional, and class jealousies; retards the natural expansion of the labour market; and has no tendency, as a wise law should have, to make parents cling to their offspring with a pecuniary as well as a parental interest. Convert the Canadian or the Australian public to the belief that its revenue could be easily raised without the aid of import duties, by simply employing its credit and capital in directly encouraging the development of the natural resources of the country, and a healthy demand for labourers would arise, which England alone could not satisfy.

Capital, machinery, and skilled

labour are the three requisites for developing the natural resources of a country. To endeavour to cultivate these requisites by help of a protective custom-house with its expensive staff of unproductive officials is like going many miles roundabout to procure an object on the opposite side of the street. To employ the tariff for revenue purposes is equally foolish, when less objectionable means are at our command. The mercantile profits derivable from legitimate national establishments, such as the post-office, public railways and telegraphs, State land, and loan banks, Government life assurance offices, and industrial prisons and workhouses, would so far exceed the revenues of a custom-house as to enable a nation unburdened with debt to dispense with all taxation. And the prudent management of public affairs by the public on commercial principles ought to stimulate sound private enterprise, and check the establishment, or growth, of those bubble companies whose collapse produces so much general destitution.

But the question arises, What are legitimate public as distinguished from legitimate private undertakings ? On this subject much prejudice and some misconception prevail. It is not uncommon for the Government and the nation to be spoken of as if their interests were separate or opposed to each other; whereas the Government is, or ought to be, the mere arm or instrument that executes the national will. Hence, in all cases of mismanaged public business, the remedy does not consist in getting private companies or local communities to do national work, but in dismissing incompetent State officials. It is wiser to encourage private enterprise by developing rather than by dwarfing, by stimulating rather than by usurping the flow of public enterprise.

Public undertakings may be di

vided into two classes-the national, and the municipal or local. Gasworks, water-works, docks, tramways, omnibuses, &c., are examples of undertakings which, if prudently managed by the municipality, ought to yield a revenue sufficient to balance ordinary local expenditure; and to permit private companies to extract large dividends from them is not only to inflict a direct injury on the community, but to lessen the force and influence of private enterprise in more legitimate and more productive directions. As a rule, it is not wise to allow a purely dividendseeking company to undertake the sole management of any business in which the people generally are directly interested, and which, by its nature or extent, must be more or less of a monopoly, requiring more or less of Government aid or interference to establish and keep it going. For example, public railways and telegraphs being arteries and nerves in our Imperial system, it is essential to a high state of social health that they should be in direct

connection with the heart and the backbone of the nation. It is equally necessary, in the case of all public establishments where the commer cial element could be introduced, that they should be made to yield a fair profit on the capital invested in them; that this profit should be employed in relieving the nation of its tax-gathering machinery and its most objectionable taxes; and that the duration of Parliaments should be shortened so as to give that stimulus to business efficiency and economy, and that check to redtapeism and mismanagement, which unlimited competition gives to private traders.