EDITOR'S TABLE. 



265 



we are discussing is that contributed by 

 the editor, Mr. Thomas Mackay, on In- 

 vestment. In a certain sense it may be 

 said to cover the whole ground ; for it 

 deals in the most exhaustive and logical 

 manner with the pretension put forward 

 by socialists that all capital should be 

 vested in the state and used by it for 

 the general good. It shows that as an 

 investor of capital the state is con- 

 spicuously incompetent, and that this is 

 so from the very nature of the case. 

 We are tempted to reproduce Mr. Mac- 

 kay's terse and vigorous statement of his 

 own position : " We argue that capital 

 should belong to him who has earned it, 

 that he alone can make the best use of 

 it, and that he alone should suffer if it 

 is allowed to disappear in ill-considered 

 ventures, or to waste away more rapidly 

 than is necessary for want of due repa- 

 ration and care ; further, that the right 

 of bequest and inheritance is the most 

 economical as well as the most equitable 

 method for the devolution of property 

 from one generation to another; and 

 that the socialist ideal of the universal 

 usefulness of capital, which is our ideal 

 also, can be reached by an ever-widen- 

 ing extension of private ownership and 

 by that means only." This is a succinct 

 and to us refreshing statement of the 

 individualist position; but Mr. Mackay 

 is careful to add that he has no " super- 

 stitious respect for the laws which 

 guarantee to owners too extended an 

 authority over their property " ; and he 

 lays down what seems to us a useful 

 definition when he says that " the rights 

 of property are those which the mutual 

 forbearance of the members of society 

 finds convenient and indispensable." 

 He thinks that matters in which the 

 courts of law now intervene could be 

 better settled by the parties out of 

 court, and that a certain curtailment in 

 the number of actionable cases might 

 well be made. "In an atmosphere of 

 liberty human character," he declares, 

 " has an adaptability which will prove 

 equal to all occasions." What he desid- 



erates is a " character saturated with the 

 motives of the free life, and in the con- 

 viction realized by experience, sanc- 

 tioned by free choice and made instinct- 

 ive by custom, that the free interchange 

 of mutual service and mutual forbear- 

 ance is the beneficent and yet attainable 

 principle on which the well-being of 

 society depends." These, however, are 

 mere expressions of opinion, and Mr. 

 Mackay does not put them forward 

 without bringing facts to their support. 

 His criticism of the state as an invest- 

 or of the people's money will be found 

 most searching; at the same time he 

 frankly admits that the constantly re- 

 curring scandals which mark national 

 and municipal administration are due, 

 " not so much to the incapacity of ves- 

 trydom as to the impossible duties for 

 which it is held responsible." He be- 

 lieves (with Henry George) that the legal 

 restrictions on the liquor-traffic have 

 impeded the growth of temperance, and 

 he gives his reasons which we can not 

 here reproduce. Of capital philanthrop- 

 ically employed, he says very tersely 

 that "its usefulness varies inversely 

 as its philanthropy " ; and this opinion, 

 too, is backed by cogent reasons drawn 

 from actual experience. Long ago the 

 world's greatest dramatist said, in a 

 passage which Mr. Spencer has most 

 effectively quoted in his First Principles, 



" Nature is made better by no mean, 

 But Nature makes that mean." 



We may apply this somewhat differ- 

 ently from what Mr. Spencer has done, 

 and say that Nature can not be bettered 

 by any mean that is not itself natural ; 

 and it is because so much philanthropy 

 is against Nature actually intended to 

 check and antagonize the working of 

 natural laws that it so signally and 

 lamentably fails of any useful effect, and 

 tends rather to aggravate social evils. 

 The laws of the universe are more 

 beneficent than we sometimes take them 

 to be, even the law of natural selection 

 which is so often railed against as cruel. 



