SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
323 
great.” We beg leave to differ from Mr. Bax’s estimate of the 
relative efficiency of the Collectivist factory as compared with 
the individualist owner of a needle and thread, but it is more 
important to observe that, in the absence of prohibitory laws, 
the old “ profit-mongering, competitive, individualistic system ” 
will be sure to creep in again. In process of time, even if a 
counter-revolution does not hasten matters, energetic individuals, 
in spite of the levelling system of remuneration, will amass capital 
by working overtime. They will then compete with the State 
in production, and, unless we read history all awrong, they will 
in the end prevail. 
Thus it appears that the Collectivist experiment can only 
be tried after the sacrifice of national honour j the experiment 
itself, if workable at all, would deprive life of most of what 
makes life endurable, and sooner or later it would inevitably 
f^-il and leave us centuries behind even our present stage of 
development 
Moreover, the Social Democrats of England are never tired 
of asserting—what, indeed, is sufficiently obvious—that a forcible 
revolution will be necessary before they can try their Collectivist 
scheme. It cannot, they say, like the systems of Owen and 
Fourier, be tried experimentally on a small scale. T hey there 
fore lay themselves open to the strictures passed by J. S. Mil 
on the Revolutionary Socialists of the Continent in respect of 
similar schemes proposed by them. It must be acknow 
ledged,” he says, “ that those who would play this game on the 
strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by 
^ny experimental verification—who would forcibly deprive all 
^ho have now a comfortable physical existence of their only 
present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightfu 
bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was 
msisted—must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom 
on the one hand, and a recklessness of other people s sufferings 
on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the 
typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up 
to.” * 
Unless a great change comes over the workers of England, 
* “ Chapters on Socialism,” lortnightly Review (April, 1879).