noxious deposits from which those poisons chiefly spring, if carried away to the country, would restore to the soil the richness and fertility which the food of the great towns withdraws from it. The obstacles to the establishment of this harmonious relation between town and country, and of all other conditions conducive to the welfare of crowded populations, are mainly financial, and to these the following remarks shall be confined. Loans for Town Drainage and Water Supply. Measures for the improvement of towns are of two classes: first, such as it is generally admitted must be carried out by some sort of corporate or collective authority; and secondly, those which are considered attainable either by private philanthropy, or through the enlightened self-interest of capitalists leading to industrial enterprises. Of the former kind are drainage, water supply, and the formation of town parks, and of the latter the erection of improved dwellings, with the auxiliary institutions of baths and wash-houses. Drainage and water supply, so far as they involve any new work, are operations of that kind in which disposable capital is converted into income, and by which, therefore, the balance between the two, when it inclines to excess on the side of capital, may be most easily restored. Here then, upon the principles already laid down, is another mode in which the credit of the State might be used to give a beneficial direction to our present dangerous accumulation of capital. In drainage and water supply capital must be sunk, as in railways; but a full return might be obtained through rates, which would be in no way burthensome, if, like the agricultural drainage repayments, they were spread over a sufficient number of years. There would be no difficulty in effecting this through the central Government, which might borrow at the lowest interest, and would have it in its own power to make the security on which it might lend satisfactory. Without the intervention of the Government, the money, if it could be had at all, would be obtained at a higher cost, and still greater difficulties would be experienced in settling the only method of repayment which does not involve hardship, nor give temptation to waste, namely, that of equal annual instalments. The operation as a whole would involve no loss. An eminently beneficial direction would be given to capital, which if not applied wisely will certainly be applied unwisely. A silent unostentatious benefit would be conferred on the great body of the working class. The periodical saturnalia of speculation might for once be passed over. Loans for Improvement of Dwellings. The formation of town parks may, perhaps, be included with drainage and water supply as a proper object for Government loans and corporate enterprise; but the proposition to extend the same principle to the erection of a superior class of dwellings for the working population will encounter the most stern opposition. Laissez-faire, smarting in its den under the pain of recent wounds, a little humiliated, and not a little savage, will growl and snarl, and grind its teeth at such stark-naked socialism. Nevertheless, the danger must be faced. The peril of our situation is deadly and imminent. Those who think they see any way of lessening it, must expect wo and selfcondemnation, if they are deterred by the fear of personal consequences from giving the thought utterance. It appears to me, then, that upon the principle and with the conditions already explained, loans might also be made by the Government to corporate bodies, for the erection of improved dwellings for the working classes. It is sufficiently well known, that some dwellings of a superior order have been already erected by voluntary societies, and the immediate objects of those erections have been successfully secured. Clean, airy, and wholesome habitations have been provided for a certain number of persons, at an expense not ments. greater than what they paid for the close and fetid rooms in which they previously resided. The benefit is very highly appreciated by those who enjoy it. But it was never imagined by the originators of this plan, that they could do more than make a beginning of the great change which they saw to be so desirable. They hoped to be able to show, that those dwellings would furnish such a return to the capital invested in them, as would draw the all-powerful current of private enterprise into the same channel. There has been great and most valuable success, but there has not been this crowning triumph, and the difficulties in the way of reaching such a point are greater than were fully appreciated at the outset of the enterprise. In the first place, it was not to be expected that the most economical mode of erection would be hit upon, either in an experimental essay, or by a society of philanthropists. Steamengines failed before they succeeded, and commercial history is full of losses which pave the way to the most profitable investThe societies for erecting improved dwellings have not yet been able to show a practical result which would set private enterprise in motion. The capitalists upon whom they could expect to act are not so much the owners of the unemployed fund in the money market, as one particular class, namely, builders, with whom it happens, as it does in other branches of industry, that the greater part of their own new capital is the product of their own gains. Building capitalists choose not an investment which will barely pay, but that which will pay best, and of two modes in which the returns may be nearly equal, that is the least attractive in which repayments come in the form of weekly rents. All these causes conspire to form a thick hedge of obstacles between the capital of the private builder and that mode of application which would be most beneficial to the labouring class. Those who do build for that class go on in the beaten track, erecting, in many cases, what speedily become foul and pestilential dens, yet with impunity and with profit; for custom gives a colour of propriety to every exercise of the right of property, and by way of compensation produces a certain torpid patience and insensibility under the evils thus arising, in those who are the victims. Now, if this great and urgent work of improving the dwellings of the labouring class, which is evidently far too great for the efforts of voluntary philanthropy, and which is not likely to be done for a long time to come, through private enterprise, should appear to be capable of great acceleration through the agency of the State; and if it should further appear that such agency might be employed without positive pecuniary loss, the practical inference will follow, that the credit of the Government could not possibly be made use of for a better purpose. That it could be done without loss, or without serious loss, may be disputed, and this question, of course, could only be settled by minute investigation. All that is here contended for is, that if the prospect can be fairly shown to be such as to promise repayment of the low interest of a Government loan, then the case is one for Government interference, through the medium of the various municipal corporations; because every year that passes over our heads in our present condition brings with it vast evils, which no time should be lost in removing. CHAPTER VII. WORKING PARTNERSHIPS. "Venturæque byemis memores, æstate laborem Ignavum, fucos, pecus a præsepibus arcent. Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella."-VIRG. GEORG. Socialism.-Doctrine of Fourier. SOCIALISM is a delusion. It is necessary to oppose it, but it is folly to despise it. It is a delusion, because it proceeds either upon a mistaken view of human nature, or upon the expectation that some sudden change would take place, at the beginning of a Socialist experiment, in the governing motives of mankind, without any miraculous means being shown for bringing that change about. The mistaken view of human nature is most conspicuous in the singularly curious, but not popular, system of Fourier'. Indeed, it is far too ingenious and His work on the passions, which shows the basis of his system, has been translated into English by the Rev. J. R. Morell; but his industrial scheme must be sought in the "Théorie des Quatre Mouvements," his first, shortest, and most characteristic work, and the "Théorie de l'Unité Universelle." |