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well-to-do have become more frequently the subject of actions in our Courts of Law, and Rome at its worst is being amply reproduced in modern plutocratic society. There has been no cessation in the Capitalist output of moral, industrial, and economic failure. And we stand almost alone giving guidance as to the way onwards. Every proposal of any value made by politicians, has its origin in our work—whether it be afforestation, or national control of railways; the establishment of a rural ppulation on a basis of public ownership of land or the proper incidence of taxation. The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission is but a Socialist document—our old proposals paraphrased, brought up to date as to facts and experience, issued at the public expense.

At the same time, there has been just that slackening in our hold on the workers which ought to remind us in these days of industrial depression and Capitalist failure, that Socialism is not to come from the misery of the people. And the better-to-do people, conscious also that they are living under a system which must pass away because it cannot secure economic justice, and because its distribution cannot be determined by merit and its property founded on service, run hither and thither like disturbed ants seeking a security they cannot find, frightened by threats of invasion, of taxation, of confiscation of property; and according to the law of Capitalism, their timorousness and ignorance are exploited by some of their own section, and the press that creates their scares is maintained by their subscriptions.

I know that there is a belief still fairly prevalent amongst one school of Socialist theorists that the more Capitalism fails the clearer will the way to Socialism be—that from the misery of the people the Socialist future will arise. I have never shared that faith. For with depression has not come more strenuous thinking, but more despairing action. Poverty of mind and body blurs the vision and does not clarify it. For instance, there is a propaganda at present being conducted by money subscribed by those interested in creating new means of exploiting the public, and by methods which must be loathsome to everybody who has any ideal of public rectitude and political honour. I refer to the Tariff Reform
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