SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 319 
plunder. It is as they say, “ a class war,” in its literal and 
terrible sense, to which they are urging the people. 
I do not propose to criticise in detail all “ the stepping- 
stones to a happier period ” above mentioned. I believe that, 
so far as they depend for their efficacy on the principle of 
plunder, they will be rejected, as soon as they are understood, 
by the overwhelming majority of the working classes of this 
country. The three first articles of the New Charter, however, 
are not necessarily revolutionary in any proper sense of the 
term ; the only question is whether they would be beneficial. 
As to the compulsory construction of labourers’ dwellings “ in 
proportion to the population, to be let at rents to cover the cost 
of construction and maintenance alone,” unless—as, indeed, 
appears to be intended—the sites are to be obtained as part of the 
“ spoils of war,” it is by no means certain that the State, with 
all its inevitable jobbery, incompetence, and extravagance, is 
the best agency for providing labourers with good houses at low ' 
rents. In any case, on Mr. Hyndman’s own principle of the 
bare-subsistence wage, the net result, under existing economic 
conditions, would be to benefit the “ slave-drivers ” by lowering 
the rate of wages. All thinking persons, however, are fully 
convinced that stringent measures are imperatively called for to 
put an end to the scandalous way in which large numbers of 
the labourers in town and country are housed. The question 
is beset with difficulties, but it seems to me that such measures, 
so far as they require a change in the law, should take the 
direction of obliging those who profit by the letting of houses, 
to see that they fulfil certain minimum sanitary requirements, 
or, in the alternative, to surrender them up at a price to be 
determined having regard to that obligation, rather than that of 
calling in an elaborate State machinery for any large construc 
tive effort. Persons should not be allowed “to profit by 
their own wrong,” but it is better, where possible, to enforce 
individual responsibility than to supersede it by officialism. As 
to “ free education ” with “ one wholesome meal a day,” this 
too, as far as the parents are concerned, would seem, on Mr. 
Hyndman’s principles, to be equivalent to a rate in aid of 
wages ; for what the parents gain by having their children’s