70 



*491ST OEDmAEY GENEEAL MEETING 

 MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1st, 1909. 



Professor E. Hull, LL.D., F.R.S. (Vice-President), 

 IN THE Chair. 



The Minutes of the pr evious Meeting having been read and confirmed, 

 the following candidates were elected as Associates of the Victoria 

 Institute : — 



Edwin H. Banks, Esq., M.A., D.L., J.P. 

 Miss Mary Beachcroft. 



The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



OHEISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. By W. CuxNningham, 

 D.D., Archdeacon of Ely. 



FEW occurrences in the history of the English people have 

 been more remarkable than the rapid strides which have 

 been made by Socialism, during the last thirty years, in 

 capturing public opinion, and becoming a great political force. 

 In 1879, it had hardly any footing in England at all ; the 

 ordinary newspaper reader regarded it as a craze which took 

 possession of hysterical foreigners, but which had no attraction 

 for the common sense of Englishmen. Trade Union policy was 

 entirely uninfluenced by it, in the days of the Junta ;t and 

 till the Fiibian Essays were published in 1889, there was little 

 evidence that its doctrines had any hold in literary circles. 

 But the world has moved since then ; many measures, which 

 the last generation would have condemned as socialistic, have 

 been passed by Parliament ; and, in any gathering of clergy and 

 ministers, there are sure to be many who take a pride in 

 declaring that they are Christian socialists. It may be doubted 

 whether any such rapid change in public opinion occurred even 

 at the Reformation itself ; and there is no other period in which 

 the modification of accepted principles has been comparable to 

 that which is taking place in the present generation. 



* Held in the House of the Royal Society of Arts, 

 t S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism^ 215. 



