CHKISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 



95 



But there is one question which ought first to be asked, and 

 which I have seldom seen asked when Socialism is discussed. JVliat 

 is Socialism ? AYe should surely commence with definitions. I am 

 an outsider, not an expert. But am I wrong in supposing that 

 Socialism properly means the subordination of the individual to the 

 community. If this be so, then Socialism is only a question of 

 degree. Society without a certain amount of Socialism is an 

 impossibility. AVe have Socialism now. Every law, every tax, 

 every army, every prison, every policeman, is a Socialistic institution. 

 And the only practical question for us is, how far shall Socialism be 

 carried 1 AVe English have found that the further, within certain 

 limits, the rights of the individual can be allowed to extend, the 

 greater the prosperity our country enjoys. It seems pretty clear that 

 we have carried it rather too far, and that we should be better off if 

 some more restraints were put on individual liberty. But there 

 can be little doubt that if we went to the opposite extreme, we 

 should be infinitely worse oft', as long as human nature remains 

 what it is. My friend the Archdeacon gave a guarded approval of 

 the municipalisation so much in fashion just now. But it is 

 exposed, in the present conditioTi of humanity, to two very serious 

 dangers. First, the principle of popular election will not always 

 provide us with the men most fitted to manage our affairs, and 

 next, as hundreds of instances have of late made plain to us, we 

 cannot get rid of unfair partiality and of corruption in the action 

 of municipal and other bodies. It would, as the Archdeacon 

 reminds us, be the extreme of folly to place ourselves under the 

 control of a handful of men, who by reason of the incompetency of 

 the individual elector to form a sound judgment, will in all 

 probability be found more or less unfit for the responsible task 

 entrusted to them. The impulse of self-interest and regard for 

 one's family has, since the world began, been the strongest incentive 

 to individual and social well-being. And the Archdeacon well 

 reminds us of the deadening effect on a growing child of destroying 

 all hope and spring in its life by the knowledge that he cannot 

 follow the bent of his own nature, but must be bound hand and foot 

 and all his native impulses crushed by the irresistible despotism of an 

 all-powerful governing body. The Archdeacon tells us of the hope 

 of benefiting his kind that animates the Socialist. But that hope 

 may reasonably be balanced by a well-groimded fear that the 



