remedy based on it largely impracticable, as well as illusory, where most required.

The true state of the case is no doubt as Mr. Giffen represents it: that wages have increased in all the grades of labour down to the lowest during the last fifty years, though the increase has been relatively less in the lowest grade; that most labourers' necessaries have been cheapened, except house-rent and agricultural products other than corn; that the wagesfund, therefore, or the amount of capital that goes to the payment of labourers, has not diminished much relatively, or apart altogether from the wages-fund theory, that the portion of produce which capitalists have retained as their reward has not so greatly increased; while, moreover, a part of that, as well as of landlords' rents and of taxes, goes to hired unproductive labourers-a fact which, though mentioned, is afterwards forgotten by Cairnes. There has been an improvement, then, though the condition of common labourers still leaves much to be desired.

The further cure for low wages, at least for England, the circumstances of each country being special, would consist not so much in emigration or additional restraints on population (though both may be necessary in future to some extent), as in the discovery of new and free markets for our manufactures; the diminution or removal of hostile tariffs by treaties or conventions, which where our self-governed colonies are concerned might be arranged between the Imperial and Colonial Governments; inventions which cheapen production of any kind, and which, though at first they give less employment, open the way for more ulti

mately. These, on the economical side; on the moral as well as economical side, a willingness to save for less interest, and to devote business abilities for less than present remuneration,—both implying profitsharing in a wide sense,-would give employment to all labourers down to the lowest at increased wages; while increased saving, accompanied with less luxurious expenditure, would tend to give a greater abundance, and by consequence greater wages to all, though it would convert some labourers who make luxuries for the rich into labourers for a wider circle of clients. It would, in fact, partly realize the Socialist levelling aims spontaneously; though as it implies a serious change of moral disposition, it is rather to be wished than expected, at least for some considerable time to come.

The labourers on their side may in certain regions, especially in the lowest grades, exercise a greater restraint on population in the future, though even here absolute and general rules cannot safely be laid down. It is, however, certain that if the advice of Malthus had been acted on ever since he gave it in 1798, the enormous development of wealth which has since resulted would have been impossible for want of labourers; while it is doubtful if the fewer labourers that would now be in existence would have much higher wages. Most certainly, without the increase of population, the vast addition to the world's wealth from the development of the resources of North America would have been impossible, by which we have profited as well as the people of America, inasmuch as it has delivered us from exclusive dependence

on the food resources of a small country. Nevertheless it would seem that the need of a somewhat greater restraint on numbers may be necessary in the future, from the very fact of the occupation of the best lands for colonization.

The State could also, as before said, by providing educational facilities to the children of the poorer class, give them access to the grades of labour above their own traditional one, from which their poverty now excludes them. Such mild dose of. Socialism in our social system would probably not be relished by the skilled labourers whose qualified monopoly of a profitable field it would threaten, nor by those who might be taxed to pay for it. Nevertheless on ethical grounds it seems just, as on political grounds it is necessary, in face of the fact that the class of unskilled labourers is politically equal with the other labourers; though the instance is one that shows that the assumed solidarity of interest of the whole working class is by no means always the fact: a consideration of some importance, inasmuch as it may impose an emphatic prohibition on some social specifics which overlook it.

Complete Socialism, as conceived by the Collectivists, even it otherwise practicable, would still be a doubtful cure for the low wages of common labour. The amount of the produce to be divided amongst all would indeed be increased by rent and interest, as well as by wages of management, so far as these are excessive at present, perhaps by a still further levelling down of these, as also by the conversion of all idlers into workers, and by the restrictions on the production

of luxuries requiring much labour: on the other side, there would be the danger of greatly diminished capital, the diminished stimulus to invention, and to efficient production so far as dependent on the personal interest of the industrial directors and of all superior labourers, added to the not improbable stimulus to population; so that the quota of each, though it might be above the Ricardian minimum, would certainly not be as high as that of the better-paid artisan at present. The general level of wages might conceivably rise a little above the present scale for common labour, by pulling down the share of all other workers, as well as of non-workers; while so far as Socialism discouraged foreign trade, as it would be obliged to do by its principles, the shares of all would most probably fall below even bare subsistence.

III.

THERE remains beneath the classes at low wages a peculiar and somewhat indefinite class, half labourers, half idlers, willing or unwilling, whose case requires a separate consideration-the class of casual labourers who live by occasional spells of work, by doing odd jobs and miscellaneous services, or as occasional dependents on other labourers, eked out sometimes by out-door relief or by other charity, sometimes by the labour of wife or children, as well as in numerous other ways both known and unknown. This class, speaking generally, is both physically and mora ly unfit for regular and continuous labour from day to day, though its members are quite capab e of rendering individual services requiring human hands or

human intelligence. The class is numerous, especially in the great cities, and most of all in London. It contains both hereditary members, and many who have fallen into it from all the classes above, sometimes from bad moral character or from incapacity, sometimes from mere misfortune and without imputable fault; persons feeble in physique or mind without being proper subjects for the hospital or the asylum, as well as others physically strong and mentally capable, but who dislike all regular work as disagreeable. On its lower side the class is in contact with, or shades down into, the lowest social deposit, composed of criminals, semi-criminals, tramps, professional mendicants, &c.; and it and these last together constitute the social residuum.

The class or congeries of classes is on the whole a very shiftless and hopeless one, though the upper section of it, containing the best members, can live without out-door relief, there being a certain indefinite demand for their ocasional services, while such intermittent jobs and individual services are commonly well paid. The whole class is numerous, though probably relatively less numerous than formerly; it is for the most part unhappy, especially its fallen members, and certainly very poor.

3

What to do with this large class, or how to diminish its numbers, has long been a perplexity to states:men and a problem for social philosophers and reformers. Whippings, brandings, imprisonment, and executions have been tried to reduce it. Poor Laws were framed

3 See Booth's "Life an Labour of the People" for interesting facts and figures touching those classes.