3 1 o 



ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv 



it is claimed 



large by distributing amongst it an enormous income, 

 which at present, instead of stimulating anybody to 

 any useful exertion, merely keeps a number of men 

 in idleness. And this contention at first sight does 

 not lack plausibility either in respect of the question 

 of abstract justice which it raises, or of the practical 

 consequences which, according to it, the arrange- 

 ment in question would produce. When we ex- 

 amine it closely, however, the plausibility vanishes, 

 and abstract justice and practical reason alike con- 

 demn the appeals thus made to them as founded 

 entirely on misconception. 



Let us deal with the question of abstract justice 

 first. Those who denounce interest or unearned 

 income as unjust, invariably state their case in the 

 following simple form. There are only two ways, 

 for it is argued they say, in which a man can become possessed of 



' i ? i i i i 



ither by producing such and such an 



that all wealth 



which is not Wealth 



m^bettoien. amount himself, or by appropriating such and such 

 an amount that has been produced by another 

 person ; or, as they frequently put it, with an air of 

 solemn sententiousness, "'A man can get an income 

 only by working or by stealing : there is no third 

 way f" Now one conclusive answer to this puerile, 

 though popular, sophism has, strangely enough, 

 been given by Mr. Henry George, who, though 

 eager to adopt any argument that could be used to 

 assail the rich, was, nevertheless, not taken in by 

 this. Mr. George pointed out that one kind of 

 wealth, at all events, and we may add that in this 

 we have wealth in its oldest form consists of 



