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SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND.

The  connection  between  the  Christian  Socialist  efforts  of
Maurice  and  Kingsley  and  their  friends,  and  the  co-operative
movement  out  of  which  the  present  co-operative  organization
has  grown  up,  is  very  candidly  stated  by  Mr.  E.  V.  Neale,  who
was  concerned  in  the  Christian  Socialist  movement  of  1848,  and
is  now  the  venerable  general  secretary  of  the  Co-operative  Union.
In  a  letter  published  by  Professor  R.  T.  Ely,*  Mr.  Neale  says
that  the  two  movements  were  “independent  of  each  other  in
their  origin,  though  they  have  subsequently,  to  a  certain  extent
coalesced.”  The  Rochdale  Pioneers,  who  gave  the  first
impulse  to  the  distributive  societies  in  1844,  were  Owenite
rather  than  Christian,  and  it  was  not  until  the  beginning  of  1850
that  the  “  Society  for  promoting  Working  Men’s  Associations  ”
was  started  in  London  under  the  presidency  of  Mr.  Maurice.
Most  of  the  societies  formed  under  the  special  influence  of  the
Christian  Socialists  in  London  failed  from  one  cause  or  another,
and,  as  Mr.  Neale  says,  “  had  it  not  been  for  the  growth  of
distributive  co-operation  in  the  north,  the  movement  would
have  been  at  an  end  in  England.”  The  efforts  of  the  Christian
Socialists  were,  however,  not  without  fruit.  It  was  mainly
through  their  instrumentality  that  a  most  desirable  change  in
the  law  as  to  Industrial  and  Provident  societies  was  effected
in  1852,  and  when  the  first  steps  towards  the  present  organization ­
  had  been  taken,  the  influence  of  Maurice  and  Kingsley
was  undoubtedly  felt  in  the  moral  and  broadly  Christian  tone
infused  throughout  the  movement,  f
The  Christian  Socialists  of  to-day  in  England  maintain  that
they  are  but  carrying  out  the  teachings  of  Maurice  and  Kingsley, ­
  though  the  more  advanced  add  that  they  are  doing  so  in
the  light  of  the  economic  investigations  of  Karl  Marx,  Lassai  le,
and  Henry  George.  Many  of  them  are  far  more  radical  in
their  aims  than  their  Continental  namesakes,  whether  of  the
school  of  Bishop  Ketteler  or  of  that  of  Dr.  Stocker.  The  most
extreme  section  is  represented  by  the  “  Guild  of  St.  Matthew,”
•  See  his  “French  and  German  Socialism  in  modern  times”  (1883),
p.  2152.
t  Seethe  “Manual  for  Co-operators,”  edited  by  Thorny  Hughes,  Q.C.,
and  E.  V.  Neale,  and  pubhshed  for  the  Central  Co-operative  Board.