Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/204

190 this to be an establishment of limits "by reason and science," what are the kinds of "reason and science" by which he expects to establish them?

On another page M. de Laveleye says—

"I am of opinion that the State should make use of its legitimate powers of action for the establishment of greater equality among men, in proportion to their personal merits" (p. 489).

Merely observing that the expression "its legitimate powers of action" seems to imply a begging of the question, since the chief point in dispute is—What are "its legitimate powers of action;" I go on to express my surprise at such a sentence coming from a distinguished political economist. M. de Laveleye refers to the "old-fashioned political economy," implying that he is one of those younger economists who dissent from its doctrine; but I was quite unprepared to find that his dissent went so far as tacitly to deny that in the average of cases a proportioning of rewards to personal merits naturally takes place under the free play of supply and demand. Still less, after all the exposures made of the miseries inflicted on men throughout the past by the blundering attempts of the State to adjust prices and wages, did I expect to see in a political economist such a revived confidence in the State as would commission it to adjust men's rewards "in proportion to their personal merit." I hear that there are some who contend that payment should be proportionate to the disagreeableness of the work done: the implication, I suppose, being that the knacker and the nightman should reeeive two or three guineas a day, while a physician's fee should be half-a-crown. But, with such a proportioning, I suspect that, as there would be no returns adequate to repay the cost and time and labor of preparation for the practice of medicine, physicians would quickly disappear; as would, indeed, all those required for the higher social functions. I do not suppose that M. de Laveleye contemplates a proportioning just of this kind. But if in face of all experience, past and present, he trusts officialism to judge of "personal merits," he is sanguine to a degree which surprises me.

One of the questions which M. de Laveleye asks is—

"If the intervention of public power for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes be a contradiction of history, and a return to ancient militant society, how is it that the country in which the new industrial organization is the most developed—that is to say, England—is also the country where State intervention is the most rapidly increasing, and where opinion is at the same time pressing for these powers of interference to be still further extended?" (p. 491).

Several questions are here raised besides the chief one. I have already pointed out that my objection is not to "intervention of public power for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes,"