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108 the following: that very soon the industry of a community would be destroyed by its members regarding exertion as unnecessary, if a livelihood were always ensured to those who did not work. Exactly the same objection may be brought against our Poor-Law system, and yet England has obtained a great commercial position in spite of this impediment to her industrial progress. Internal dissensions would be the greatest difficulty against which the scheme of Fourier would have to contend; men would be dissatisfied with the grade in which they were placed, and the chiefs of a community would occupy a position most difficult to maintain, for a man is most jealous of any interference with the details of his daily life. Again, if such a community were prosperous, and if wealth were more equally distributed than in the present state of society, all the members of the community would be sufficiently well off to marry at an early age; the result would be a rapid increase of population; the land possessed by the community would soon become not sufficient to supply the increased population with food; food would become much more expensive, and there would soon arise poverty and distress. We believe that all such schemes of socialism must entirely fail, if, in a country like our own, they attempt to displace a state of society based on a private property. It is, however, advisable to allude to the principal socialistic schemes, because, at different times, they have excited great interest, and the speculations of the authors of these schemes are deserving of much careful attention. The difficulties which we believe will oppose the success of socialism have not been pointed out in a spirit of antagonism. A socialistic experiment may be made without inflicting the slightest loss or injury upon any but those who voluntarily take part in it. It is quite possible that such an experiment would dispel many of those objections which beforehand appear most formidable. Such an experiment ought then to be welcomed and not opposed, for socialism has always been mainly prompted by a desire to alleviate the poverty which presses so heavily upon a large portion of mankind.

We have been careful to point out that the socialistic