INCREASE OF SOCIAL WEALTH 389 



statistical returns concerning the income-tax in Prussia and 

 Saxony are absolutely decisive against tlie thesis of Marx, which 

 proclaims the gradual disappearance of the middle classes and 

 the increasing pauperism of the masses."^ 



But this -increase of social wealth which we observe in Great 

 Britain, in France, in Germany, and which we should doubtless 

 notice also in the United States if we had reliable statistics to 

 hand, need not necessarily be taken as a result of the growth of 

 ethical influences.^ Because the number of persons who are 

 well ofE is proportionately greater than it was thirty years ago ; 

 because the standard of life among the masses of the people has 

 been raised; it by no means follows that altruistic tendencies 

 have therefore been at work with that degree of force and 

 universaUty which Mr. Benjamin Kidd assigns to them. The 

 increase of social wealth may, with greater probability, be 

 ascribed to the working of forces whoUy unethical in their nature ; 

 and if we desire to ascribe this development primarily to the 

 operation of ethical forces, we may with at least equal justice 

 ascribe it to egoistic as to altruistic influences. For what has 



^ P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Le Collectivism^ : Examen critique du Nouveau 

 Socialisme, p. 480 (Paris, 4th edition, 1903). The whole of this valuable 

 work, and especially the latter part — pp. 456-626 — should be studied with 

 careful attention. 



2 Nevertheless, despite the figures given by Bernstein respecting the 

 increase of the proprietary classes iu England, it remains a fact that the 

 inequality in the distribution of wealth in that country is more pronounced 

 than it is elsewhere. The altruistic influences of which Mr. Kidd 

 speaks have not made themselves as yet manifest in the United Kingdom 

 in the shape of a more equal repartition of social riches, as will be seen 

 from the figures given below. It is incontestable, as Bernstein and 

 Leroy-BeauUeu, and also the late Lord Goschen (c/. Journal of the 

 Royal Statistical Society, 1887, pp. 581, 612), have observed, that 

 the number of shareholders, of taxable revenues and of assurance 

 policies, has been constantly and uninterruptedly on the increase since 

 1875. But this fact has not resulted in a levelling of class differences, 

 and the alleged altruism of society in Great Britain appears to find 

 nothing extraordinary in the economic inequalities to which the following 

 figures bear witness. 



M. Jacques Bardoux, in a recent important work on England, gives us 



