pearance of a new movement. If the thing does not as often happens, the name dies with it. This bles us to fix with sufficient precision the beginnings Socialism as a definite and continuous movement, ich is what we are concerned with here. Of course was not wholly new; nothing of the kind ever is. ere are always anticipations, germinal ideas, prelimiy signs, partial efforts; and it is interesting to trace m. But they are different-fragmentary, isolated, ortlived; and in the case of Socialism it is only coning to mix them up with the thing itself until a clear aception of it has been gained, when they fall into eir proper place. We can therefore leave aside Plato ad all the Utopias, the Fathers of the Church, the merous communist settlements attempted from time time by religious bodies, and all similar manifestaons. They had something in them common to Socialism at were not the same, and did not bear the name, which as not coined until the 19th century.

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Socialism, in the sense indicated, is just about one andred years old. In fact, if I were asked to name a parlcular year as the date of its birth, I should fix on 1824, hich is marked out by several concurrent events of imortance. That year witnessed in England the foundaon of the London Co-operative Society, the repeal of he Combination Acts, and the publication of William Thompson's Inquiry into the Principles of the Distriation of Wealth,' which furnished the basis of the onomic theory of Socialism; in France there occurred he death of Saint-Simon and the founding therewith of he school which he left behind him as a legacy. There ad previously been nothing that can be called a definite chool of Socialism either in England or in France, hough there had been writings and discussions tending owards it in both. But in 1824 a distinct school of thought, an organised movement, was started independently in each country; and it was in those schools that the term was coined, the name adopted, and its meaning defined. I will come to the details presently after recalling the circumstances in which all this took place.

A hundred years ago Europe was passing through the period of depression and difficulty that followed the

Napoleonic wars and strongly resembled the prese The nations were impoverished and burdened with de and taxation, their currencies were depreciated by flation, exchanges disorganised, and trade depress England and France, which had been the chief prota nists and were at the same time the most hig developed countries economically, were particularly h hit. England, which even then was more dependent foreign trade than other countries, though very mɩ less so than now, suffered probably most of all fr commercial depression, through the inability of forei customers to buy her products; unemployment and tress were widespread and intense; prices were hi and wages low. When this period, in which Sociali was born, is discussed sufficient weight is never allow to the economic after-effects of the war, which h lasted for twenty-two years, piled up an enormous de and impoverished the world. It has long been the fashi to ascribe all the trouble to the 'industrial revolutic

an expression, by the way, first used by Napoleon St Helena to signify the rise of industry and its rival with landed property, but generally taken to mean t supersession of hand processes of manufacture by pow machinery. This great change was going on at the tir in the textile trades, particularly in weaving, and w the cause of much hardship to weavers thrown out work by machines; but it seems to me that the genera expansion of manufactures, and especially the creatic of new industries, which more than anything else di tinguished the economic character of the period, mu have increased employment and promoted prosperity it had not been for the financial disorganisation cause by the war, or rather wars, for in addition to the we with France we had been engaged in several others. I point of fact it was so. As the dislocation was graduall overcome, employment increased, and a far larger popt lation enjoyed a greater degree of prosperity than before It was our new industries that pulled us out of the post war difficulties, and set us on our financial feet again as the world gradually emerged from the impoverish ment caused by war.

At the same time the character of those industrie and their rapid expansion, though less responsible fo

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e prevailing distress than is usually assumed, tended accentuate discontent and stimulate criticism by eating a new-rich class, whose wealth, so speedily quired, presented a glaring contrast with the lot of e wage-earners, by whose assistance they had acquired And the contrast was the more striking because the w rich sprang themselves mainly from the same ranks the new poor. The picture, which has so often been awn by Socialist writers, and particularly by Marx, presenting the industrial capitalists of this period as ready rich men who took advantage of machinery to rind the faces of the poor, is quite false. The great ajority of them were workmen of exceptional capacity ho set up for themselves and began in a small way; hey were 'self-made men,' and these were ever the ardest task-masters. The unimpeachable testimony of he 'Poor Man's Guardian' in 1831-the 'Daily Herald' if that time-is sufficient evidence:

་ 'How many individuals have been known to raise themelves from the lowest walks of life to the greatest heights of affluence, rank, and station of society; yet it is invariably the case that such men are greater tyrants and oppressors of that class from which they sprang than those who were born n affluence.'

The new conditions of manufacture not only provided exceptional men with new opportunities to become rich but at the same time gave them power over their less capable fellows, which they commonly misused in the pursuit of wealth; not with the intention of doing any harm, but simply from the habit of getting and keeping all they could, as one such employer told a deputation, which came to ask for a rise in wages. They reminded him that when he was a workman he always tried to get as much as he could. 'Yes,' he replied, and I haven't changed yet,' whereupon they withdrew. This was the new capitalism, though that term was not then oined. It did not differ in essential principle from the old capitalism-which is as old as history-but it did differ in the scale of operations, and to such an extent as to introduce new conditions and relations. And as the cale increased, riches and the power of riches increased with it, aggravating the contrast between the Haves and the Have-nots, the powerful and the weak.

Further, this development was accompanied by th growing acceptance of the economic doctrine of laisse faire or free enterprise and free competition, which h been formulated in the 18th century. It came to identified with the industrial development, though th had been in progress before it was formulated, becau it furnished a theoretical justification for letting m and things alone to work out their own salvation. Th is to say, the state of things indicated had not only co to pass but was defended and maintained on econom grounds. This was an important factor, because econom theory was acquiring great authority and a degree ascendancy which caused the study of facts to be st ordinated to abstract reasoning, so that the doctrine laissez-faire became a powerful influence in the defer of abuses. The main conditions, then, prevailing hundred years ago were post-war dislocation, depr sion, and distress, super-imposed on great changes industrial life, which involved hardship and bred di content, but found authoritative support in the domina economic theory of the day. The inevitable result of this was reaction, and in that reaction Socialism w born. It was an extreme expression of the reactio which was, however, by no means confined to it but to several other forms of a less sweeping character. Facto laws for the protection of children (1819 and 1824) we one form; trade unionism, enabling workmen to prote themselves by combination, and rendered legal by t repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824, was anothe Both were definite encroachments on the unfetter freedom of industrial employers, formally sanctioned 1 Parliament and destined to grow into a vast system restraints. They were tangible fruits of a gener tendency, which worked also in other more indefini ways. Nor did reaction lack its theoretical side. It pr duced the first formal attack on laissez-faire economics, n from a Socialist but from a neutral economist. This w Sismondi, the eminent historian. His contemporar evidence is of extraordinary interest and worth som attention for several reasons, one of which is that h has been generally ignored, and another that he antic pated nearly all the main points in Marx's indictment c the capitalist system, including the idea of surplus valu

Sismondi (1773-1842) is best known by his histories of ance and the Italian Republics, both of which are ssics to this day; but he was an economist before he came an historian, and had an admirable training, at st in a business house in Lyons and afterwards by idence and study in England and Italy as well as in ance and Switzerland. In 1803 he published a work commercial wealth, which brought him an offer of e chair of political economy at the University of ilna; but he refused it in order to retain his indendence. He was then an ardent disciple of Adam mith, and held the doctrine of free trade; but unlike ther economists of that time he was led by observation perceive its ill effects, particularly in England, and to uestion the arguments for its unqualified application. After completing his work on the Italian Republics he arned again to economics, and in 1819 he published his New Principles of Political Economy,' in which he pointed ut the course that the industrial development had etually taken and the evils associated with it. He argued hat wealth was the fruit of labour, that free enterprise and self-interest had led to a cut-throat competition, which enriched some but impoverished more, and that the economy of production enforced by it necessarily entailed economy in the payment of labour, which was thus driven down; that though discoveries and inventions by increasing the power of man might be a benefit, yet the unjust distribution of the wealth obtained by their means changed them into scourges to the poor; that they tended to reduce the reward and value of labour by throwing superabundant hands on the market; that a class of proletaries' had been created, of whom it might almost be said that in modern times the community lives at the expense of the proletary on that share of the remuneration of his labour which it deducts from him'; that the income derived from industry and distributed as rent, interest, and profits was nothing but the surplus of the value of what labour has produced above the advances that have been made to produce it'; that large concerns killed small ones and drove small employers into the proletarian class; and in this way an abyss was created between extreme opulence and extreme poverty; that works tended