i 7 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but, in our prosaic age, rank and fortune too often triumph over beau- 

 ty, strength, and health. In the animal world, the destiny of each one 

 is decided by its personal qualities. In society, a man attains a high 

 position, or marries a beautiful woman, because he is of high birth, or 

 wealthy, although he may be ugly, lazy, and extravagant. The per- 

 manent army and the navy would also have to be destroyed, before 

 the Darwinian law could triumph. Conscription on the Continent and 

 enlistment in England (to a less degree) condemn many of the strong- 

 est and most warlike men to enforced celibacy ; and, as they are sub- 

 jected to exceptional dangers in the way of hazardous expeditions and 

 wars, the death-rate is far higher amongst them than it would be 

 under ordinary circumstances. In pre-historic times, or in a general 

 way, such men would certainly have begotten offspring, as being the 

 strongest and most apt to survive ; in our societies, they are decimated 

 or condemned to celibacy. 



Having borrowed from orthodox political economy the notion that 

 it would suffice to put a check on inopportune State intervention for 

 the reign of justice to become established, Mr. Herbert Spencer pro- 

 ceeds to demonstrate that the legislators who enacted the poor-law, 

 and all recent and present law-makers " who have made regulations 

 which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps, who 

 ramble from union to union, and which maintain a constant supply of 

 felons by sending back convicts into society under such conditions 

 that they are almost compelled again to commit crimes," are alone 

 responsible for the sufferings of the working-classes. But may we 

 not blame law-makers, or, rather, our own social order, for measures 

 more fatal in their results than either of these for instance, the law 

 which concentrates all property into the hands of a few owners? 

 Some years ago, Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote some lines on this sub- 

 ject which are the most severe indictment against the present social 

 order that has ever fallen from the pen of a really competent 

 writer : 



" Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects of their 

 desires given a world adapted to the gratification of those desires a world 

 into which such beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they 

 have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of them 'has freedom to 

 do all tbat he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,' 

 then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, pro- 

 vided he allows all others the same liberty. And, conversely, it is manifest that 

 no one or part of them may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest 

 from similarly using it, seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than 

 the rest, and, consequently, to break the law. Equity, therefore, does not per- 

 mit property in land. On examination, all existing titles to such property turn 

 out to be invalid ; those founded on reclamation inclusive. It appears that not 

 even an equal apportionment of the earth amongst its inhabitants could generate 

 a legitimate proprietorship. "We find that, if pushed to its ultimate consequences, 

 a claim to exclusive possession of the soil involves a land-owning despotism. We 



