46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



know that whether a better regime is conceivable or not, human nature 

 being what it is now (and I am one of those who think that the regime 

 is the best, the general result of a vast community living as the British 

 nation does, with all the means of healthy life and civilization at com- 

 mand, being little short of a marvel if we only consider for a moment 

 what vices of anarchy and misrule in society have had to be rooted 

 out to make this marvel) ; still, whether best or not, it is something 

 to know that vast improvement has been possible with this regime. 

 Surely the lesson is that the nation ought to go on improving on the 

 same lines, relaxing none of the efforts which have been so successful. 

 Steady progress in the direction maintained for the last fifty years 

 must soon make the English people vastly superior to what they are 

 now. 



I should like to add just one or two remarks bearing on questions 

 of the moment, and as to the desirability or possibility of a change of 

 regime now so much discussed, which the figures I have brought be- 

 fore you suggest. One is, that, apart from all objections of principle 

 to schemes of confiscating capital — land nationalization, or collectiv- 

 ism, or whatever they may be called — the masses could not hope to 

 have much to divide by any such schemes. Taking the income from 

 capital at £400,000,000, we must not suppose that the whole of that 

 would be divisible among the masses if capital were confiscated. What 

 the capitalist classes spend is a very different thing from what they 

 make. The annual savings of the country now exceed £200,000,000, 

 being made as a rule, though not exclusively, by the capitalist classes. 

 If, then, the £400,000,000 were to be confiscated, one of two things 

 would happen — either the savings would not be made, in which 

 case the condition of the working-classes would soon deteriorate, for 

 everything depends upon the steady increase of capital ; or the savings 

 would be made, in which case the spending power of the masses would 

 not be so very much increased. The difference would be that they 

 would be owners of the capital, but the income would itself remain 

 untouched. The system under which large capitals are in a few hands 

 may, in fact, have its good side in this, that the Jay Goulds, Vander- 

 bilts, and Rothschilds can not spend their income. The consequent 

 accumulation of capital is, in fact, one of the reasons why the reward 

 for labor is so high, and the masses get nearly all the benefit of the 

 great increase of production. The other remark I have to make is 

 that, if the object really aimed at by those who talk of land national- 

 ization and the like is carried out, the people who will suffer are those 

 who receive large wages. To effect what they intend, the agitators 

 must not merely seize on the property of a few, they must confiscate 

 what are as much earnings as those of a mechanic or a laborer, and 

 the wages of the most skilled mechanics and artisans themselves. 

 The agitation is, in fact, to level down, to diminish the reward of 

 laborers who receive a large wage because they can do the work the 



