the second place, whereas it is commonly held that any improvement in distribution will be followed by a counterbalancing increase in population, we have found, among European races, no historical evidence, unless the very peculiar case of Ireland be an instance, of any permanent lowering of the standard of living. In other words, population has not been proved to be pressing with increased force upon subsistence, but wealth, and along with it subsistence, have, during the period in which we can test their progress, always kept well ahead of population.

The questions still remain, How is this relation brought about? and may not the means by which population is kept behind the increase of wealth be worse than the evil of overpopulation? I hope in another paper to deal with these questions, and with the economic results of the methods proposed by certain modern followers of Malthus.

ARTHUR T. LYTTELTON.

A

RODBERTUS-JAGETZOW AND SCIENTIFIC

2

SOCIALISM.1

CCORDING to the famous saying of Auguste Comte, “each of our principal conceptions, and every branch of science, passes of necessity through three different mental stages—the theological, or imaginative; the metaphysical, or abstract; the scientific, or positive." It is also possible to distinguish three periods in the history of Socialism, which, without being identical with those that Comte claimed to have found in the development of every theory, yet correspond to them in some respects. There has been, and there still is, a religious. Socialism; there has been a Utopian Socialism; and now, for nearly half a century, there has been a scientific Socialism.

The early Christians had everything in common; and even now Europe is covered by thousands of monasteries and convents where the most absolute communism is practised. They are but realizing, and pushing to their extreme consequences, those doctrines of charity, of universal brotherhood, and of renouncement of this world's goods which are taught by Christianity.

Do we wish to discover the sources of most of the ideas about the emancipation of the working classes, which of old shattered the chains of the slave, which have gradually destroyed serfdom, and which ended in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the proclamation of universal Equality? We must look for them in the Gospel-the good news announced to the poor,-in the Fathers of the Church, and in the sermons of her most renowned preachers. The line of those religious

1 Zur Beleuchtung der socialen Frage, von Dr. Carl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, Theil. i.; Zweite Auflage herausgegeben, von Dr. Moritz Wirth. und Mühlbrecht. Berlin, 1890.

Cours de philosophie positive, vol. i., p. 8.

Puttkammer

teachers who have stretched out their hands to the Socialists has continued uninterrupted up to our day, and does not seem to be at all near extinction. It begins with St. Paul, who refuses food to him who will not work; it includes bishops like Bossuet, who said before the Court of Louis XIV. :—

"What an injustice, my brethren, that the poor should bear all the burden, and that all the weight of misery should be laid on their shoulders! . . . As we have all been kneaded from the same lump, and since there cannot be much difference between mud and mud, why is it that we see on the one side pleasure, interest, and wealth; on the other, misery and utter despair, the extremity of want, and, with it, contempt and servitude, which is worse still? Why is it that this fortunate man lives in such abundance, and is able to gratify the most useless desires, the most pampered curiosity; while some wretch, a man not less than he, cannot support his poor family, nor even allay the hunger that presses him down?"

These are the kind of ideas that are animating the Christian Socialists of our epoch-the Bishop of Maintz, Mgr. Von Ketteler, the fiery Pastor Stöcker, founder of the Christlich-sociale Arbeiterpartei, Cardinal Gibbons in America, and Cardinal Manning, who recently demanded an eight-hours day and a minimum wage, just as do some of the Unions in England and the United States. This, then, is religious Socialism. It has its roots in the sense of charity and fraternity, which is the foundation of Christianity; it is inculcated by the clergy themselves as a high form of Christian morality. This is the Socialism of the heart-if we may be allowed that expression.

There is also a dream-socialism. This Socialism of the imagination is that of the Utopians. There arises, from time to time, a man of burning imagination who, struck by the evils and vices of the social structure, builds up in full completeness an ideal society, where happiness is to be constant, absolute, necessary. Plato's "Republic," More's "Utopia," and Campanella's "City of the Sun" are examples of this. Passing over Babœuf the Jacobin, who belongs to the last century, we might mention Cabet and his "Icarie," Fourrier the founder of the phalansterian school; and, quite recently, Bellamy's" Looking Backwards." We may place on one side Robert Owen and Saint-Simon; they are

generally considered as Utopians, but the idea which they gave to the world-association among workmen-is one which our epoch is realizing more and more every day. It would not be difficult to find among many contemporary theories of Socialism, further traces of that efflorescence of Utopias which mark the first half of the present century. Even French collectivism is not free from its influence; and the universal happiness, which anarchist theorists like Prince Kropotkin expect as a result of the complete destruction of society, is nothing but that universal happiness of which Fourrier dreamt, which consisted simply in the complete elimination of all the passions.

Scientific Socialism starts from quite other principles. It addresses itself to reason, and not to sentiment. It studies social phenomena with the same method and materials as the orthodox political economy. Very often it borrows its premisses from the economists; and it applies the laws which they claim to have discovered to its criticism of the existing order of things, and to its proposals of remedies for the evils of society.1

Lassalle appealed to the theorems of Ricardo in order to demonstrate one of the chief arguments of modern Socialism, "the brazen law of wages." Ricardo, applying the law of supply and demand to labour, had said that, in the long run, wages must fall to the amount which is necessary for the labourer if he is to live, and prolong the race. Lassalle had only to utilize this supposed inevitable principle to be able to affirm that, as long as the existing order of things continued, the labourer would never be able to better his condition. Ricardo's theory of rent furnished the Socialists with another ground for their criticism of our economic régime. According to Ricardo, rent is created and increases by the fact that, with the growth of population, the price of the products of the soil rises, and makes it possible to cultivate lands that are less and less fertile. From which it follows that the richer lands, by producing more and costing less, of necessity increase in value, and provide their owner with a surplus revenue that costs him

1 See the interesting work, Die Entwickelung des Socialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft, von Friedrich Engels. Höttingen, Zürich, 1883.

no labour. This is the "unearned increment," which the Socialists have used as a text for the condemnation en bloc of the whole social order.

Among those whom the problem of the nature and cause of rent has most preoccupied, must be mentioned a German Socialist, who is but little known to foreigners, but who enjoys an undisputed celebrity in Germany itself-Dr. Carl Rodbertus, Freiherr of Jagetzow, in Pomerania. Rodbertus occupies a considerable place in the history of Socialism. He has been called, with much reason, the founder of scientific Socialism. His writings, of which the earliest go back as far as 1842, contain all the ideas which Karl Marx and Lassalle afterwards spread abroad with such resounding fame. Rodbertus enjoyed a large measure of authority throughout his life, and still more after his death. Lassalle is known to have kept up a regular correspondence with him. The manuscripts which were found among his papers have been carefully published by Prof. Adolf Wagner, to whom Rodbertus dedicated some of his letters. At the present day Rodbertus may be said to have become a classical writer on Socialism in Germany; and it is very curious that Roscher should have passed him over almost in silence in his "History of Political Economy in Germany."

The life of Rodbertus was not an eventful one. The son of a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he was born in 1805, he studied equity at Göttingen and Berlin. After some years devoted to legal affairs, he made several long voyages, and finally, in 1834, he bought the Jagetzow estate; thither, in 1836, he retired, in order to devote himself to the art of agriculture, and to historical and economic studies. His political career was of short duration. He was on several occasions elected to the provincial assemblies, and in 1848 he sat on the Left Centre of the National Assembly of Prussia. He served for some time on the Auerswald-Hanseman cabinet as Minister of Public Instruction. In the following year, he was sent to the Second Chamber by the electors of Berlin, but he did not seek a renewal of his commission after the dissolution of the Chamber, and retired altogether from public life.