Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/386

 364 THE ECONOMIC JOURlqAL that the desired end of 'equality of opportunity' can be ultimately reached by allowing to each person the complete ownership of any riches he may become possessed of; and that the best possible social state will result from each individual pursuing his own interest in the way he thinks best. Fifty years' further social experience have destroyed the faith of the world in the validity of these principles as the basis of even a decent social order, and Mr. John Morley himself has told us  that ' the answer of modern statesmanship is that unfettered individual competition is not a principle to which the regulation of industry may be intrusted.' Mr. Courtney, indeed,' faithful among the faithless found,' is still unrepentant, and bids us look for no change other than a reversion to'complete personal freedom,' tempered by 'a growth in temperance, prudence, and the gift of sympathy.' But few, either among economists or among politicians, would now agree with him. 'It is indeed certain,' sums comprehensive survey of all up Dr. Ingram, at the end of his the economic tendencies, 'that industrial society will not permanently remain without a syste- matic organization. The mere conflict of private interests will uever produce a well-ordered commonwealth of labour.' 2 Modern Socialism is, accordingly, not a faith in an artificial Utopi.a, but a rapidly-spreading conviction, as yet only partly conscious of itself that social health and consequently human happiness is something apart from and above the separate interests of individuals, requiring to be consciously pursued as an end in itself; that the lesson of evolution in social develop- meut is the substitution of consciously regulated co-ordina- tion among the units of each organism for their internecine competition; s that the production and distribution of wealth, like any other public function, cannot safely be intrusted to the unfettered freedom of individuals, but needs to be organized and controlled for the benefit of the whole community; that this can be imperfectly done by means of legislative restriction and taxation, but is eventually more advantageously accomplished through the collective enterprise of the appropriate administrative unit in each case; and that the best government is accordingly that which can safely and successfully administer most.  Life of Cobden, vol. i., oh. xiii., pp. 298, ]03. 2 Article 'Political Economy,' in Ency. Britt., ninth edition, vol. xix., 1886, p. 38//; republished as History of Political Economy. 8 See Professor Huxley's pregnant declaration to this effect in the 17ineteenth .Ccntury, February, 1888. Compare D. C,. Ritchie's Darwinism aid Politics.