SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM. 5 8 3 



of the land ; though, it is not clear, if landlords were compensated, 

 what they would gain by it beyond the creation of small fanners, 

 the granting of allotments to agricultural or other laborers, as an 

 occupation for slack times, all of which may be secured otherwise : 

 so that it is not easy to forecast the resultant line of action of the 

 working classes, more especially as the interests of the skilled and 

 unskilled laborers are not always identical, however the desires 

 for higher wages and fewer hours may be common to both. 



Thus far as to the existing tendencies. As to the final goal, 

 it is very difficult to say what it will be, or what the end in 

 which society will rest (if, indeed, it ever attains to rest other 

 than provisional equilibrium). And it is difficult because of the 

 new and unforeseen factors that arise in the course of an ever- 

 expanding evolution which might upset our calculations. New 

 factors, industrial, social, moral, religious ; new physical discov- 

 eries, like steam or electricity, that might revolutionize industry ; 

 new moral or religious forces that might revolutionize manners 

 and the scheme of life, and with it indirectly the distribution of 

 wealth; and great physical discoveries and inventions affecting 

 industry we may indeed certainly look for as in the normal 

 course of evolution. 



Society may, indeed, come to the collective ownership of land 

 and capital, but it will not be for a long time ; it may come to 

 equality of material goods, but it will be at a time still more re- 

 mote. On the other hand, the system of private property and 

 freedom of contract may last indefinitely or forever ; but, if it 

 does, we may safely prophesy that it will be brought more in ac- 

 cordance with reason, justice, and the general good, and, though 

 there be never equality of property, there will be a nearer ap- 

 proach to equality of opportunities, and a somewhat nearer 

 approximation of the existing great extremes of fortune. 



Eminent writers during the past hundred years have prophe- 

 sied far more confidently as to the future : Karl Marx, as we have 

 seen, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few would 

 lead, naturally, necessarily, and at no distant date, to their expro- 

 priation, and to a collectivist regime ; and De Tocqueville, that 

 society was being borne invincibly to a state of general equality 

 of conditions, where the state would continally become more pow- 

 erful. On the other hand, the sociologists, who, if their science 

 were all that its name implies, should be able to forecast the 

 future, " to look into the seeds of time and say which grains would 

 grow and which would not," predict very differently : Comte, that 

 the concentration of capital in ever fewer hands would and should 

 lead definitely to the political rule of the capitalists, tempered by 

 the counsel of positive philosophers, and that within a short space 

 of time ; while Herbert Spencer, as we have already seen, filled 



