Social and Political Views 



equality of opportunity for all, or of universal inheritance 

 hy the State in trust for the whole community. 



" We have," he finaDy concluded, " ourselves created an 

 immoral or unmoral social environment. To undo its in- 

 evitable results we must reverse our course. We must see 

 that all our economic legislation, all our social reforms, are 

 in the very opposite direction to those hitherto adopted, and 

 that they tend in the direction of one or other of the four 

 fundamental remedies I have suggested. In this way only 

 can we hope to change our existing immoral environment 

 into a moral one, and initiate a new era of Moral Progress/' 



The " Revolt of Democracy "* wa« addressed directly to 

 the Labour Party. And once again he drew a vivid picture 

 of how, during the whole of the nineteenth century, there 

 wa« a continuous advance in the application of scientific 

 discovery to the arts, especially to the invention and appli- 

 cation of labour-saving machinery ; and how our wealth 

 had increased to an equally marvellous extent. 



He pointed out that various estimates which had been 

 made of the increase in our wealth-producing capacity 

 showed that, roughly speaking, the use of mechanical 

 power had increased it more than a hundredfold during 

 the century; yet the result had been to create a limited 

 upper class, living in unexampled luxury, while about one- 

 fourth of the whole population existed in a state of fluctuat- 

 ing penury, often sinking below the margin of poverty. Many 

 thousands were annually drawn into this gulf of destitution, 

 and died from direct starvation and premature exhaustion or 

 from diseases produced by unhealthy employment. 



During this long period, however, although wealth and 

 want had alike increased side by side, public opinion had 



^ Although this book was his last published work, it was written before 

 " Social Environment and Moral Progress." He handed me the MS. a few months 

 before his death. — The Editor. 



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