curately to his personal labour. The right and the fact which
coincided in the deer and beaver period have somehow come to diverge.

Here, then, we are at a point common to the two opposing schools.
Both are absolute 'individualists' in different senses. Society is
built up, and all industrial relations determined, by the competition
of a multitude of independent atoms, each aiming at self-preservation.
Malthus's principle applies this to the great mass of mankind.
Systematically worked out, it has led to Ricardo's identification of
value with quantities of labour. Keeping simply to the matter of fact,
it shows how a small minority have managed to get advantages in the
struggle, and to raise themselves upon the shoulders of the struggling
mass. Malthus shows that the resulting inequality prevents the
struggle from lowering every one to starvation point. But the
advantage was not obvious to the struggling mass which exemplified the
struggle for existence. If equality meant not the initial facts but
the permanent right, society was built upon injustice. Apply the
political doctrine of rights of man to the economic right to wealth,
and you have the Socialist doctrine of right to the whole produce of
labour. It is true that it is exceedingly difficult to say what each
man has created when he is really part of a complex machinery; but
that is a problem to which Socialists could apply their ingenuity. The
real answer of the political economists was that although the existing
order implied great inequalities of wealth it was yet essential to
industrial progress, and therefore to an improvement in the general
standard of comfort. This, however, was the less evident the more they
insisted upon the individual interest. The net result seemed to be
that by accident or inheritance, possibly by fraud or force, a small
number of persons have got a much larger share of wealth than their
rivals. Ricardo may expound the science accurately; and, if so, we
have to ask, What are the right ethical conclusions?

For the present, the Utilitarians seem to have considered this
question as superfluous. They were content to take the existing order
for granted; and the question remains how far their conclusions upon
that assumption could be really satisfactory.

IV. THE CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Ricardo had worked out the main outlines of the 'Classical Political
Economy': the system which to his disciples appeared to be as clear,
consist