Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/662

ÆT. 57] The conditions of membership in the Society were limited to a general agreement with the principles of Socialism, as explained in the manifesto to be issued by it, and a payment of a shilling as annual subscription. Its object was defined, or was left undefined, as the spreading of the principles of Socialism. Its place of meeting was named as being at Kelmscott House, and a few simple regulations as to officers and candidates made up the remainder of its constitution. Mr. E. Walker was, and still is, the secretary of the Society. Morris himself was treasurer. The old room in Kelmscott House continued to be at the service of the members for meetings, which were held twice a week for several years. As time went on they became more intermittent; and at last the Society continued to exist only in the sense that it never was formally dissolved.

"I have got to rewrite the manifesto for the new Hammersmith Society," Morris writes on the 9th of December, 1890, "and that I must do this very night: it is a troublesome and difficult job, and I had so much rather go on with my Saga work."

The manifesto does not throw any fresh light on his principles or methods. It is in the main a re-statement of the case against a capitalist system of society; to which a further definition of the aims of the newly-founded body is added, disclaiming State Socialism as a final ideal, but repudiating with much greater energy any doctrine which tends towards Anarchism. "It is not the dissolution of society for which we strive, but its re-integration. The idea put forward by some who attack present society, of the complete independence of every individual, that is, of freedom without society, is not merely impossible of realization, but when looked into, turns out to be inconceivable." Rh