TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 9o7 



England, the harbour of the exiles ; and the steps will be taken without deliberate 

 human contrivance. We may look forward to the changed order as better than 

 the present, but we cannot either hasten or retard it ; it will come of itself. We 

 cannot by taking thought add a cubit, or even an inch, to our stature. 



The German socialists have not had the cracelessness to hve up to this 

 comfortable doctrine ; they have agitated like other people, preparing the way for 

 a change while declaring that it cannot possibly be hastened. Not agreeing with 

 them in the least in their doctrine of helplessness, most of us will welcome and 

 commend their inconsistent efforts to make the world better than it 18 ; and they 

 have fairly earned exemption from the title of mere theorists. 



The Italian form of the materialistic view of history has been expounded with 

 great ingenuity and learning by Professor Loria. It has excited interest chiefly in 

 academic circles, but need not be disparaged on that account. His theory is that 

 all progress is economic, and all economic change is due to the land and the growth 

 of population thereon. Though he contrives to differ from Malthus, they have 

 much in common ; and we cannot discuss the theory of our contemporary without 

 remembering that it is exactly 100 years since Malthus wrote his essay. Malthus 

 lived to be present with the British Association in Cambridge in June 1833,^ dying 

 at St. Catherine's, Bath, at the end of the following year. But he first made his 

 mark in 1798, when he grafted on economics his theory of population. Professor 

 Loria may be said to magnify that theory even when disputing it. He thinks 

 that, so long as there is free land, or abundance of room as well as food, men will 

 themselves be free. Xo one will be economically weak if he has always the option 

 of working as profitably for himself as for another. This is true, and we have had 

 recent instances. Khama was aft-aid to sell his land lest he and his should become 

 mere hewers of wood and drawers of water to the white men.^ The same notion 

 seems to have prompted the recent resistance to the hut tax in Sierra Leone. Pro- 

 fessor Marshall, in his address to this Section in 1890 at Leeds, recalled to us the 

 difficulty felt in the United States fifty years ago by employers who imported 

 English workmen for their Eastern factories ; the workmen moved west to become 

 free settlers. But Professor Loria tells us, besides, how the land ceases to play 

 this part. The growth of population leads to the disappearance of free land, and 

 therewith of the independence that went with it. The growth of population even 

 now leads to the pressure felt both in cities and in country districts. It affects 

 the higher, or protected or propertied classes ; they need to fence themselves about 

 with 'connective institutions' that support their rights of property. It leads 

 gradually to a less and less profitable production from the soil, and therefore to a 

 less and less profitable investment of capital. These effects, in their turn, lead to a 

 greater power of combined labourers against the employer. Professor Loria 

 €xpect3 in the end the victory of the combined labourers, since happily the men of 

 property are divided among themselves — agriculturists against manufacturers and 

 traders, for example — and there is a division of the revenue. In the end there will 

 prevail a form of co-operative labour. The labourer's option will be restored to him 

 (though hardly, we may presume, in the form of free land), and dependence in the 

 ■obnoxious sense of economic weakness over against economic strength will vanish. 

 The Professor agrees with the Germans that we cannot work out this salvation, or 

 even hasten it. We can only stand at a distance and behold the Promised Land. 



That some such consummation is devoutly to be wished, and even perhaps 

 hopefully to be expected, is probably the conviction of many who do not encumber 

 their belief with a materialistic view of history. Instead of the material changes 

 bringing the moral transformation, we may think that the moral and intellectual 

 changes are a condition of the material reform. It seems to us to have been so 

 with ourselves in past times ; we never work better than when we believe that our 

 future depends on ourselves, and we have not simply to wait for it. Marx and 

 Loria allow that the automatic establishment of better conditions of life is slow 

 and irregular. They say that the laws and governments of all civilised countries 



' See Si//iiature.i of Members, p. 36 (Cambridge, 183:^). 

 2 Despatch of Mr. Moffat to Colonial Office, 1894. 



