refrains from doing so and lends it to some one else to be applied to public services or further production. The interest he receives is the consideration to which he is entitled for refraining from spending the money on himself; and as long as he refrains he is entitled to go on receiving it. Capitalists are always supposed to be idle and rich, but the vast majority of investors are hard-working people of all classes who earn the money they invest. Let us take two or three cases of capitalist production, not hypothetical ones but from real life, and see where the injustice comes in. A. has made some money by taking up land in Canada and working it himself; he has fairly earned it by all the rules of Socialism, and it is his own to spend. But he sees an opportunity of establishing an agricultural industry near a poverty-stricken town in the old country. He puts his money into that, builds his factory, takes the people out of the workhouse and the streets, teaches them the work and pays them good wages. His business at the same time helps the neighbouring farmers and so increases employment. Is he not entitled to the profit? Who is robbed or exploited? No one; everybody is benefited-the workers, the community, the farmers, and the consumers. The thing prospers and can be extended with the help of more capital; another man agrees to invest the required sum in consideration of a share in the returns. Again everybody is benefited; no one is robbed or injured. B. has brought an important machine into practical working and makes a fortune by selling it to other people who are glad to buy it. But he has further ideas, and is seized with a desire to utilise a waste product which exists in great quantities but is of no use to any one. He expends his whole fortune in pursuing this aim and eventually succeeds. He thereby gives employment to five thousand people and enriches the world by turning rubbish into a valuable thing. Who is injured or exploited? Who is entitled to the product? Neither of these men could have done what they did without capital, and no government would have taken the risks of doing it. C. is the owner of a cotton mill in America. Under stress of competition he takes out his old machinery and instals a complete set of the newest Lancashire machines, which are very costly. He thereby increases his output or reduces expense by 7 per cent., and at the same time makes the work lighter for the operatives. Who has earned the difference? But there remains the ethical argument, chiefly used by the modern English Christian Socialists, who accept the Collectivist formula and argue that it is practical Christianity as taught in the Gospel and practised by the early Christians. They confuse two opposite things. The early Christians voluntarily gave up property and shared their goods under the impulse of a great religious emotion. Collectivism proposes to compel people to give up and share precisely because they have not got the impulse; and Christian Socialists think the two things the same. They call the present system Individualism, but Individualism is not a system; it is a theory or way of looking at things. The actual system is a compromise between individual and social needs; Socialism, which is a system, would make the latter supreme and destroy the balance. They say it would promote brotherly love. Well, we can test it; does it? Does any one feel a glow of affection for the municipal tram-driver or State railway official as distinguished from others, or he for any one? On the contrary, no one cares in the least whether he is a public or a private servant, and you only recognise that he is the former by his less obliging and more arbitrary demeanour. Are you drawn to the postoffice people more than to the shopkeeper with whom you habitually deal? On the contrary, your relations in the latter case are friendly; in the former they are absolutely cold except when they are disagreeable. The truth is that business relations are a great cement and the agent of far more mutual obligation, esteem, and goodwill than of strife, brow-beating, and dishonesty, which only affect a small part of the whole. To reduce all business to the cold, indifferent relations of a public office would divide rather than unite, and do nothing to soften the competition for applause, fame, admiration, sexual love, and many other non-economic objects which cause infinitely more jealousy, heart-burning, intrigue, and violent crime than business. The Gospel makes little of material things, of poverty and riches; Socialism makes them supreme. Christianity makes each indi vidual responsible for his own deeds; Socialism makes the system responsible and puts an excuse in every one's mouth. There is good reason for the hatred of Christianity which Socialists used freely to express and still feel, though they now profess indifference from motives of expediency. In conclusion, the ticable nor desirable. biting sarcasm. Collectivist State is neither prac- 'Driven from their own field, miracles have taken refuge in political economy. You will hear it said, as a perfectly natural thing, that by working less you gain more, that by producing dearer you can sell cheaper, that by paralysing initiative you form strong wills, well-seasoned minds and powerful nations, that by entrusting affairs to incapable hands you secure good administration, that by promising the people to give them the moon you show a sincere love for them, that with poor individuals you make a rich society, that by disorganising the whole of which we are part you work usefully to make us happy.' In Australia the Labour party, which is now in power and has long adopted a full Collectivist programme, is about to demonstrate its impracticability by not attempting it. But the great current of change, of which Socialism is the surface froth, will go on; let no one doubt it. It will more and more diffuse material wealth and well-being, and in the process it may well be that the idle rich will gradually be shorn of some part of their idleness and riches. But this change will proceed by gradual and rational reforms or re-adjustments. The essential difference between Socialism and social reform in this connexion can be expressed in a nutshell. Capital is power, which may be used, like other forms of power, for good and for evil. The right remedy for the latter is to restrain the misuse of the power, not to destroy it which would impoverish mankind. The mistake Socialists make is to assume that private capital is necessarily bad and public capital necessarily beneficent. You might as well say that private action is always foolish or base and public action always wise and virtuous. The true criterion is not the form of ownership, but the use made of it. Art. 8.-THE HISTORY OF THE SIKHS. 1. Origin of the Sikh Power in the Panjab, and Political Life of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. By H. T. Prinsep and Captain William Murray. Calcutta: G. H. Huttmany, 1834. 2. A History of the Sikhs, from the Origin of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej. By Joseph Davey Cunningham, late Captain of Engineers in the Indian Army. London: Murray, 1849, 1853. 3. Ranjit Singh. (Rulers of India Series.') By Sir Lepel Griffin, K.C.S.I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892. 4. The Sikhs. By General Sir John J. H. Gordon, K.C.B. London: Blackwood, 1904. 5. The Sikh Religion, its Gurus, Sacred Writings, and Authors. By Max Arthur Macauliffe, I.C.S. (retired). Six vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. 6. Census Reports of India, and the Panjab, 1881, 1891, 1901. 7. The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907-1909. In his Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India,' Sir Alfred Lyall pointed out that the rapid expansion of the power of the Sikhs illustrates the almost invariable process by which in Asia every great proselytising movement tends to acquire a political and militant character. This movement, in the case of Sikhism, it is proposed to trace briefly, to show its origin and meaning, the progress of the Sikhs to nationality, and their absorption under British rule. Since then their militant spirit has found employment in the Indian army, where they are greatly valued as soldiers. Their religion, an offshoot from Hinduism, has features of special interest, and has never been so fully explained as in Mr Macauliffe's six volumes, lately published. Though the number of the Sikhs is comparatively small, they form an important minority among the subject peoples of India. India has always been the land of philosophic speculation and religious thought. Long before the appearance of Sikhism, Buddhism and its contemporary Jainism succumbed to the revival of Brahmanical Hinduism. The Muhammadans invaded India and introduced their monotheistic creed. Living in a Hindu country, they felt the influence of Hinduism, while retaining their essential belief in the unity of God. Holy men, Hindu saints and thinkers, appearing at intervals through the centuries, contested the superstitions and religious practices they found prevalent. Abandoning the worship of idols, they arrived by meditation and study at theistic conclusions. Religious zeal, bigotry, persecution, were common; the idea of reformation was never absent. 6 At Talwandi, thirty miles from Lahore, situated in a forest remote from the tumults and excitements of the political world, Nanak, destined to be the founder of the Sikhs and their religion, was born in 1469, a Hindu, of the Bedi section of the Khatri caste. In retirement and the society of religious men he became imbued with the latest teachings of philosophers and reformers, who had attacked priestcraft, idolatry, and polytheism. Indifferent to all worldly concerns, he disdained practical work; a very brief period of official employment was sufficient for him. He donned a religious costume and suddenly announced There is no Hindu and no Musalman'; he desired to found a religion which should be acceptable both to Hindus and Muhammadans, without altogether conforming to either faith. He revolted, like Buddha, against sacerdotalism, and found the Jats willing to accept his doctrines. He wandered in Upper India for twelve years with a companion, preaching as he went, conveying his instructions in hymns uttered on every occasion. After revisiting his home, he travelled to Southern India, Ceylon, Kashmir, Mecca, Medina, Baghdad. He claimed to be a guide to salvation, and came to be universally regarded as a man of God. Societies of his followers began to be formed; he, as their Guru, or spiritual guide, called them Sikhs, from the Sanskrit Sishya, meaning disciples, a religious, not a racial distinction; he died at Kartarpur in the Panjab in 1538, having selected Angad, a favourite convert, to be his successor as Guru. Nanak travelled to regenerate the human race by asserting the unity of God, the primal, omnipotent and omnipresent. He established a separate religion, setting aside the Vedas and the Koran; he claimed no inspiration |