ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 135 



point of view, and tending to rapid social deterioration — should if 

 possible have been prevented. A social adjustment adapted to that 

 purpose might have been found in a land tax like that suggested 

 by a very eminent English economist, the late John Stuart Mill, 

 namely, a tax which as nearly as practicable should appropriate for 

 public purposes the whole unearned increase in the rental value of 

 land. But Mr. Mill's suggestion had not been made until about 

 fifteen years ago, and the advanced public opinion necessary to the 

 adoption of a plan involving some such principle did not exist 

 even yet. That the situation created by the want of social and 

 political adjustments adapted to modern industrial conditions was 

 a very serious one was apparent from indications that might be seen 

 on every hand. To close the great gap between social and physical 

 science — between moral progress as defined in the paper just read 

 and material progress as illustrated in the stupendous achievements 

 of modern industrial art — was in the speaker's opinion the crying 

 need of the time, and unless this need were supplied there would 

 be imminent danger o'f a social catastrophe. In order tliat it 

 might be supplied it was necessary that social questions should 

 receive attention to a vastly increased extent. In particular should 

 the most serious and unprejudiced consideration be given to the 

 manifestations of discontent that came from the working people of 

 every civilized nation. If they were not proposing the best remedies 

 for tlie evils they complained of, so much the greater was the need 

 that the deep sociological problems involved should be taken up in 

 earnest by those who had more time and a better intellectual equip- 

 ment for their study; and they must be taken up, not as it was to be 

 feared they had been by some men rated high as political econo- 

 mists, namely, in the spirit of an advocate retained for the defense 

 of the existing state of things — but in the pure spirit of the man of 

 science, ready to follow where the truth should lead, however 

 great and radical the social changes which might be involved in 

 doing so. 



There were very influential writers who would have us believe 

 that the discontent of the poorer classes had no foundation miless it 

 were in the mischievous meddling of governments with the natural 

 course of affairs. The speaker believed that we should come much 

 nearer the truth if we accepted the views advanced in the paper 

 under discussion, which were directly the reverse of that just indi- 

 cated, recognizing the necessity of social coordinations to which 



