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  steppingstones
  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  constructive ­
  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