w penalties, and casts a spawn of
inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of
England. It may be right or wrong, we are not trying that; but one thing
it is beyond doubt: it is Socialism in action, and the strange thing is
that we scarcely know it.

Liberty has served us a long while, and it may be time to seek new
altars. Like all other principles, she has been proved to be
self-exclusive in the long run. She has taken wages besides (like all
other virtues) and dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we were
accustomed to admire as the benefits of freedom and common to all were
truly benefits of wealth, and took their value from our neighbours'
poverty. A few shocks of logic, a few disclosures (in the journalistic
phrase) of what the freedom of manufacturers, landlords, or shipowners
may imply for operatives, tenants or seamen, and we not unnaturally
begin to turn to that other pole of hope, beneficent tyranny. Freedom,
to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the
free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of
yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed,
ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently treated, and driven to
their mines and workshops by the lash of famine. So much, in other men's
affairs, we have begun to see clearly; we have begun to despair of
virtue in these other men, and from our seat in Parliament begin to
discharge upon them, thick as arrows, the host of our inspectors. The
landlord has long shaken his head over the manufacturer; those who do
business on land have lost all trust in the virtues of the shipowner;
the professions look askance upon the retail traders and have even
started their co-operative stores to ruin them; and from out the
smoke-wreaths of Birmingham a finger has begun to write upon the wall
the condemnation of the landlord. Thus, piece by piece, do we condemn
each other, and yet not perceive the conclusion, that our whole estate
is somewhat damnable. Thus, piece by piece, each acting against his
neighbour, each sawing away the branch on which some other interest is
seated, do we apply in detail our Socialistic remedies, and yet not
perceive that we are all labouring together to bring in Socialism at
large. A tendency so stupid and so selfish is like to prove invincible;
and if Socialism be at all a practicable rule of life, there is every
chance that our grandchildren will see t