728 REPORT— 1894. 



resting on the exaltation of the relatively modern institution of the State, the 

 other deriving its principal force from the oldest and most enduring element of 

 human society — the family. This aspect of the question vpiU more and more 

 come into prominence as the conflict proceeds. It is not the ' man of Nature,' the 

 individual released from all restraints, who forms the unit in our modern ' indivi- 

 dualistic' societies, but the individual with family ties and sentiments, and 

 profoundly influenced by other than purely self-regarding motives. Collectivist 

 socialism seeks to substitute for these natural agencies the comparatively artificial 

 authority of the sovereign State. It aims at transforming private into public law, 

 and it would make the life-work of the citizen one round of public administrative 

 duties. The origin of this special system is obviously due to a particular social 

 condition ; it is the natural product of the factory and the workmen's club — i.e., of 

 a mode of living in which the family has unhappily sunk to a minor position, and 

 in which the main uniting bond is that of ' comradeship.' How impossible it would 

 be to bring all human societies under a form of regulation that presupposes the 

 close contact of large masses of men, and bovr hopeless it is to expect its effective 

 worldng while the domestic organisation and family affections retain their power, 

 is a lesson that the study of social science in all its branches will most eflPectually 

 teach. 



That the time is ripe for this fuller development is, I think, clear from the interest 

 with which the most speculative works on social development are received. A daring 

 and suggestive discussion of the problem of social evolution, even if its basis is 

 highly questionable, is sure of applause and a wide circle of readers. The raost 

 pressing duty on the part of those who desire to promote true knowledge is to 

 secure that there shall be the proper preliminary training on the part of the writers 

 and competent criticism of their productions. 



Though I have dwelt mainly on the necessity for rearrangement and further 

 progress, I should be sorry to leave the impression that I undervalue the great 

 services of the English economists from Adam Smith to Senior and J. S. Mill. In 

 its later developments that school was open to criticism. Some of its members 

 committed serious faults, but they also possessed very redeeming merits. They 

 may, perhaps — let us concede it — have been narrow-minded ; they may have been 

 hard-hearted, but in studying their chosen subject they were eminently ' level- 

 headed.' They saw the working of material forces in their true balance, and were 

 not unduly influenced by passing events. This intellectual sanity and just apprecia- 

 tion of the comparative weight to be assigned to the different elements operating 

 on national life is well exemplified in an anecdote respecting Adam Smith himself, 

 which we have on unexceptionable authority. 



* Towards the close of the American War, when general despondency seemed 

 to paralyse the nation, Dr. Smith, confident in the resources of the country, 

 would not allow himself to despair of the commonwealth. On the news of 

 Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga Mr. Sinclair hurried to his friend with intelli- 

 gence of the disaster, insisting that if affairs went on no better the nation must be 

 ruined. " Be assured, my young friend," replied the imperturbable philosopher, 

 " there is a great deal of ruin in a nation." ' ' 



This attitude of calm, based on wide historical study and accurate estimate or 

 the realities of things, is a valuable example which the older economists have left 

 to their successors. At the present day, when we are always hearing of submerged 

 tenths,' of depression in every branch of industry, of destructive monetary revolu- 

 tions, and of land abandoned by its cultivators, while we seek to trace ths reality 

 and extent of these evils and to discover their causes, can we give a better reply 

 to the eager enthusiast or the hasty innovator who insists that, unless his favourite 

 nostrum is adopted, ' the nation must be ruined,' than to answer, with the calm- 

 ness that knowledge of the forces that are working for social welfare produces, ' Be 

 assured there is a great deal of ruin in a nation ? ' 



• Sinclair's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 37. 



