usage of the present time,' according to the _Catholic Encyclopædia_,
'is to make political economy an ethical science--that is, to make it
include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well
as what is.'[4] We read in the 1917 edition of Palgrave's _Dictionary
of Political Economy_, that 'The growing importance of distribution as
a practical problem has led to an increasing mutual interpenetration
of economic and ethical ideas, which in the development of economic
doctrine during the last century and a half has taken various forms.'
[5] The need for some principle by which just distribution can be
attained has been rendered pressing by the terrible effects of a
period of unrestricted competition. 'It has been widely maintained
that a strictly competitive exchange does not tend to be really
fair--some say cannot be really fair--when one of the parties is
under pressure of urgent need; and further, that the inequality of
opportunity which private property involves cannot be fully justified
on the principle of maintaining equal freedom, and leads, in fact, to
grave social injustice.'[5] In other words, the present condition of
affairs is admitted to be intolerable, and the task before the
world is to discover some alternative. The day when economics can be
divorced from ethics has passed away; there is a world-wide endeavour
to establish in the place of the old, a new society founded on an
ethical basis.[7] There are two, and only two, possible ways to
the attainment of this ideal--the way of socialism and the way of
Christianity. There can be no doubt the socialist movement derives a
great part of its popularity from its promise of a new order, based,
not on the unregulated pursuit of selfish desires, but on justice. 'To
this view of justice or equity,' writes Dr. Sidgwick, 'the socialistic
contention that labour can only receive its due reward if land and
other instruments of production are taken into public ownership,
and education of all kinds gratuitously provided by Government--has