the Society--and it
has survived not because its upholders deemed it perfect, but because
it has always been found impracticable to put on paper any alternative
on which even a few could agree. In fact, proposals to re-write the
Basis have on several occasions been referred to Committees, but none of
the Committees has ever succeeded in presenting a report.

* * * * *

At the end of the year the sole fruit of the Parliamentary League was
published. It is Tract No. 6, entitled "The True Radical Programme" and
consists of a declamatory criticism of the official Liberal-Radical
Programme announced at Nottingham in October, 1887, and a demand to
replace it by the True Radical Programme, namely, adult (in place of
manhood) suffrage, payment of Members of Parliament and election
expenses, taxation of unearned incomes, nationalisation of railways, the
eight hours day, and a few other items. "The above programme," it says,
"is sufficient for the present to fill the hands of the True Radical
Party--the New Labour Party--in a word, the Practical Socialist Party,"
It is by no means so able and careful a production as the Report on the
Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour.

In April, 1888, the seven Essayists were elected as the Executive
Committee, Graham Wallas and William Clarke taking the places of Frank
Podmore and W.L. Phillips, who retired, and at the same meeting the
Parliamentary League was turned into the Political Committee of the
Society; and Tract 7, "Capital and Land," was approved. This tract, the
work of Sydney Olivier, is a reasoned attack on Single Tax as a panacea,
and in addition contains an estimate of the total realised wealth of the
country, just as "Facts for Socialists" does of its income. This, too,
has been regularly revised and reprinted ever since and commands a
steady sale. It is now in its seventh edition.

Meanwhile the series of meetings, variously described as Public,
Ordinary, and Private, was kept on regularly twice a month, with a break
only of two months from the middle of July. Most of the meetings were
still held in the houses of members, but as early as November, 1886, an
ordinary meeting was held at Willis's Rooms, King Street, St. James's,
at that time an ultra-respectable rendezvous for societies of the most
select character, keeping up an old-fashioned ceremonial of crimson
tablecloths, elaborate silver candlesticks, and impressively liveried
fo