plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested
on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law
of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is
being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the
time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a
fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These
were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and
good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means.
Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic
anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical
theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition
tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the
unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we
are now threatened with.

That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In
the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern
in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to
bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at
the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing
resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of
payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in
the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful
trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and
the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get
much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6]
has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give
about £160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate,
discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that
under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is