176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



succour for the unworthy, whereas the reality is quite the reverse of 

 this ! Scientific socialism seeks, first of all, the means of so raising 

 the working-classes that they may be better able to maintain them- 

 selves and, consequently, to dispense with the help of others ; and, 

 secondly, it seeks to find what laws are the most in conformity with 

 absolute justice, and with that admirable precept, " Benefit in propor- 

 tion to merit, reward in proportion to desert." In the speech deliv- 

 ered by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, last year (1884), as President of the Con- 

 gress of Social Science, at its opening meeting at Birmingham, he 

 traced, in most striking language, all the good that State intervention 

 had effected in England of late yeai - s : Greater justice enforced in the 

 relations between man and man, children better educated and better 

 prepared to become useful and self-supporting members of the com- 

 munity, the farmer better guaranteed against the exaggerated or un- 

 just demands of the proprietor, greater facilities for saving offered, 

 health ensured to future generations by the hours of labour being lim- 

 ited, the lives of miners further safeguarded, so that there are less fre- 

 quent appeals to public assistance, and, as a practical result of this last 

 measure, the mortality in mines fallen in the last three years to 22 - l per 

 thousand, as compared to 27'2 per thousand during the ten previous 

 years a decrease of 20 per cent. ! One fact is sufficient to show the 

 great progress due to this State legislation : in an ever-increasing popu- 

 lation, crime is rapidly and greatly diminishing. 



Suppose that, through making better laws, men arrive gradually at 

 the condition of the Norwegian peasantry, or at an organization simi- 

 lar to that existing in the agricultural cantons of Switzerland ; that is 

 to say, that each family living in the country has a plot of ground to 

 cultivate and a house to live in : in this case every one is allowed to 

 enjoy the full fruit of his labour, and receives reward in proportion 

 to his activity and industry, which is certainly the very ideal of jus- 

 tice cuique suum. 



The true instinct of humanity has ever so understood social organ- 

 ization that property is the indispensable basis of the family, and a 

 necessary condition of freedom. To prevent any one individual from 

 being deprived of a share in the soil, which was in primitive ages con- 

 sidered to be the collective property of the tribe, it was subjected to 

 periodical divisions ; these, indeed, still take place in the Swiss All- 

 mend, in some Scottish townships, in the greater part of Java, and in 

 the Russian Mir. 



If such a regime as this were established, there would be no more 

 " tramps wandering from union to union." In such a state of society 

 as this, not in such as ours, the supreme law which ought to govern all 

 economic relations might be realized. Mr. Herbert Spencer admirably 

 defines this law in the following passage : 



" I suppose a dictum on which the current creed and the creed of science are 

 at one may be considered to have as high an authority as can be found. Well, 



