always have at its disposal the necessary funds for giving employment to workmen whom private enterprise leaves without work. The funds for doing this should be furnished by the public treasury.'1 The late Emperor Napoleon subsidised co-operative workshops in Paris freely, in lieu of giving the workmen liberty; and that Imperial friend of Humanity had whatever advantage Auguste Comte's approval could give him.

The English Conservatives are not averse to giving State aid for a similar purpose-their private difficulty is as to whether they could keep the management of the influence in their hands. The Liberals are for the people managing their own affairs, as the nobler class of Conservatives are. Sir Robert Peel who gave us Free Trade, and Lord Derby, may be counted as instances of this way of thinking. But if the other class of Conservatives, who believe that the welfare of the people depends entirely upon their being allowed to manage them, could get the upper hand, all the Jingoes would be found to be State Socialists. Trade Union workshops would be subsidised, and the Conservative working man' would be recruited by thousands from the ranks even of Liberals-for great numbers of working men are of the politics of State aid, just as great numbers of manufacturers are always of the policy of Protection.' State aid to Industry, and Protection to Trade, are the two cries of masters and men-of that class who want something done for them.

The followers of Lassalle in Germany were of this class, and were ready to support that political party which supplied them with capital. But there were also intelligent self-respecting workmen in Germany who declined to sell their birthright of independence for a mess of pottage from the State. So two parties arose. So two parties arose. They are known now as Lassallites and Marxites, and at Gotha, in 1874, they agreed to joint demands, with a view to prepare the way for the solution of the Social question, the formation of productive co-operative associations with State aid, under the democratic control of the labouring people. The productive co-operative associations to be started for industrial and agricultural operations on such a scale that the Socialistic organisation of labour in general may arise from them." As Liberals are against State subsidies, and Conservatives against 'Democratic control,' this movement stands at present high and dry in the middle of the nation. Without the democratic condition Bismarck has no more objection to State Socialism than he had in the days of Lassalle, with whom he connived to promote it.

12

State Socialism, being a disease of some of the rich as well as of many of the poor, is not to be regarded as though it were necessarily a crime in workmen. The Socialists and Nihilists among the workmen of Germany and Russia are not the dangerous class they are 1 The Labour Question, pp. 20, 21 (Manwaring, 1861). 2 J. F. Smith. Theological Review, January 1879, p. 47.

represented. A little outrage of speech or act on their part is made to go a long way 3 by classes more dangerous than they, who, unwilling to accord redress, are glad of pretexts of repression. Alarmed power has many friends. A great cry goes up in the press against assassins, while none cry out against the oppression which creates the assassinations of despair. Irritated Paternal Government is far more ferocious than any Socialism. The Father of his People' in Russia will commit more murders in a day than all the Nihilists in the empire in a generation. Despotic 'Order' has its Robespierres as well as Anarchy. The armed and conspiring Bonapartes, Bismarcks, and Czars, are bloodier far than the impotent and aspiring poor. In time, despotism irritates other persons than workmen. The unreading Russian workmen cannot produce or support a press. They have no means of organisation: they have no horses, carriages, bags of roubles, and costly weapons. They do not attack high functionaries in their offices, generals in their camps, or emperors in their courts. They do not know them when they meet them, they are ignorant where they are to be found, and could not get access to them if they knew. The disease of State Socialism is bad, but let not the crimes of others be imputed to it. We may deplore what we hear, but Englishmen need not be foolish in what they believe. It is despotism, not order, which is in danger.

The silent revolution of Industry, produced by the rise of cooperative devices, will save England from the plague of State Socialism. Intelligent artisans now understand that the two leading aims of the working classes should be independence and equality. The State Socialists propose that the Government should take all property and apply it in organising all labour, and make itself responsible for the well-being of everybody. Into this vast speculation English co-operators have never entered. Being observing persons, they perceive that a great number of the people-including a considerable portion of the working classes-are satisfied with things as they are. They do very well, or sufficiently well, under them. Cooperative Socialists concern themselves, therefore, only on behalf of such workmen as have reason to be dissatisfied and are despairing of their prospects. This class of persons Mr. Mill has described in the following memorable passage:- No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty. They are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity to the will of an employer, and debarred from ad

Not only are acts imputed to them they never meditated, but, like the Fenians whose policy was terror, the furious among them claim to be the authors of untraced crimes by which they increase their influence without increasing their danger. In Russia where even succession to the crown is adjusted by murder, and in Germany where liberty is regulated by troopers, any movement of the people may be expected to be imitative.

vantages which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert.'

This class of persons, dependent on the mercy, caprice, or necessities of capital, have a very bad outlook. Capital uses them only so far as it suits its interests, and then abandons them, not concerning itself whether they have or have not means of living. Hopeless men are always disposed to listen to any proposal of arranging things on their behalf. To such persons the idea of looking for help within their own order-which is indeed the Order of Destitution-does not occur to them. They see no avenue of self-help open to them. If they did, they would not be despairing. All they see around them is the big, glittering, opulent thing called 'Society,' which passes by them, unheeding them, except when it may turn to menace them on observing them restless. Any retaliatory suggestion, therefore, of taking contemptuous Society by the throat and making a popular distribution of its spoils, has attractions for them.

Instead of laying hands on the throat of Society, co-operators seek amendment by putting ideas of self-help into the heads of the industrious classes. They work not by revolution but by evolution. Capital, the hitherto unmanageable mother of progress, co-operation proposes to acquire for itself, and control its uses by equity. It has a device for saving money without laying it by, and of accumulating it without earning it. The early process is slow, but increases rapidly with persistence. Its first step is the store; the second, self-employment in workshops; the third, self-supporting villages-self-governed, self-sustained communities. Trades Unionists have already large sums of capital, and can enter on the path of self-employment when they see their way, and by withdrawing labour from the market raise wages without the cost of strikes. Workmen of spirit regard State Socialism as the small-pox of servility. Those unvaccinated with independence take it, and the abject have it very badly.

The State, not a thing independent of the people, but a system under the control of the people, should have charge only of those general interests which from time to time may be committed to it. As Society progresses, things not yet assigned to the State may come to be best performed by it; and it will cease to do many things it now does, as the capacity of self-government increases in the people. If towns may acquire lands for free parks, provide free libraries, free education (for a time), toll-less roads, improved streets, acquire waterworks, and gas-works, and taverns, the State may take upon itself other limited public duties and organise railway transit and even acquire the land, using the increment in the value for national expenditure as the public welfare or public policy may determine.

Free government is yet in its infancy, and the limits are not yet traced of State action and local life. Many consider that the State may represent the uniformity of law, protection, order, right, and

national economy; while Social life should keep free, industry, conscience, education, individuality, and progress. Of one thing we are sure, that the world has been too much governed by persons whose talent has lain chiefly in taking care of themselves. There have always been too many people ready to regulate society in their own interests, whereas the welfare of the world lies in the direction of self-government. Humanity has been too much sat upon by rulers, heaven-born and devil-born-the latter class chiefly prevailing. What is wanted is increase in the general capacity of self-government. The far-seeing prayer of Robert Browning should be put up in all the churches

Make no more giants, God,

But elevate the race at once.

What we want in society is no leadership save that of thought— no authority save that of principles-no laws save those which increase honest freedom-no influence save that of service. Then State Socialism will disappear like the Black Death and other obsolete pestilences. The English working class, if not brilliant, have a steady, dogged, unsubduable instinct of self-sufficiency in them, and never despair of going forward alone. Being a self-acting race, they are alike impatient of military mastery or paternal coddling, and in their crude but manly and ever improving way, they make it their business to take care of the State and never intend to allow the State to take care of them. State Socialism is the cry for organisation in life, which nascent popular intelligence desires, but at present is too uneducated to accomplish. Its seed, sown in servile ground, will find its fruition in independence. The age of 'giants' has disappeared in history and cannot be continued in politics. The rise of democracy forbids that. Education has at least awakened individualism, and the elevation of common life is the tendency of the age. The English revolution of Labour will proceed on the lines of self-help upon which it has been founded.

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

GREECE AND THE TREATY OF BERLIN.

THE EASTERN QUESTION has as many heads as the hydra. There is, however, one of them which, though all are endowed with an equal tenacity of life, does not now inspire, even where morbid feeling is most rife among us, the same sentiments of terror and misgiving as the rest. This one is the Hellenic element in the vast and complicated subject; which, and which alone, has at last been happily detached from considerations fatal to mental equilibrium, and which has been placed upon a basis sufficiently simple by the Twenty-fourth Article of the Treaty of Berlin, together with the Thirteenth Protocol of the Congress.

The treaty states, in its Twenty-fourth Article, that if Turkey and Greece should fail to agree on the rectification of frontier indicated in the Thirteenth Protocol, the six cosignatary Powers reserve it to themselves to offer their mediation to the two parties, in order to facilitate the negotiations. In the Thirteenth Protocol, the Congress had invited the Porte to arrange (s'entendre) with Greece on a rectification of frontier in Thessaly and Epirus; and had delivered its judgment that this rectification might follow the valley of the Salambrias (the ancient Peneus) from the eastward side, and that of the Kalamas from the westward. The Salambrias issues into the Gulf of Salonica near its mouth, the Kalamas has its sortie opposite Corfu. The head waters of both descend from tracts lying considerably northward of the point at which they join the respective seas: and it may be said that a line fairly traced between them would make an addition of between one-fourth and one-third to the superficial area of the Hellenic kingdom.

A few words may be added to show how strictly the territory embraced by this decision of the Congress ought to be regarded as (what was called at Constantinople in 1877) an irreducible minimum. It does not cover, or nearly cover, the whole of the territory inhabited by a people properly Hellenic: for the ground where the Slav begins to mix with the Hellene lies far beyond it. Setting apart, then, the question whether Turkey might justly have stipulated for a money payment in respect to her cession, we may safely say that the limit of the district thus marked out is far more confined than the principle