604: INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



&quot;C est la le danger des encheres electorates dont les questions 

 ouvrieres et sociales font 1 objet entre les partis . . . C est ainsi que le 

 socialisme d Etat a pris pied dans les lois d un pays qui fut longtemps 

 la terre classique du self-government et de la liberte industrielle. Si 

 jamais le socialisme parvient a s en emparer, ce sera, en grande partie, 

 aux fausses manoauvres et a la coupable faiblesse des politiciens que 

 sera du ce deplorable resultat.&quot; 



And thus, being the creature of his party and the creature of 

 his constituents, he does not hesitate in making each citizen 

 the creature of the community. 



This general drift towards a form of society in which 

 private activities of every kind, guided by individual wills, 

 are to be replaced by public activities guided by govern 

 mental will, must inevitably be made more rapid by recent 

 organic changes, which further increase the powers of those 

 who gain by public administrations and decrease the powers 

 of those who lose by them. Already national and municipal 

 franchises, so framed as to dissociate the giving of votes from 

 the bearing of burdens, have resulted, as was long ago 

 pointed out they must do,* in multiplied meddlings and 

 lavish expenditure. And now the extension of similar 

 franchises to parishes will augment such effects. With a 

 fatuity almost passing belief, legislators have concluded that 

 things will go well when the many say to the few &quot; We 

 will decide what shall be done and you shall pay for it.&quot; 

 Table conversations show that even by many people called 

 educated, Government is regarded as having unlimited 

 powers joined with unlimited resources; and political 

 speeches make the rustic think of it as an earthly providence 

 which can do anything for him if interested men will let it. 

 Naturally it happens that, as a socialist lecturer writes 

 &quot; To get listeners to socialist arguments is to get converts; &quot; 

 for the listener is not shown that the benefits to be conferred 

 on each, will be benefits derived from the labours of all, 

 carried on under compulsion. He does not see that he can 

 have the mess of pottage only by surrendering his birth- 

 * Westminster Beview, April, 1860; see also Essays, vol. iii, p. 358, ctseq. 



