nature of this "bestness" being intelligently determined--oligarchy will be recognised as the most satisfactory form of government: and in order to exclude objectionable one-sidedness in the method of selecting voters for the high duty of guarding the nation's honour, no doubt some method of selection by vote can be discovered, free from liability to reintroduce the baleful evil of party. Coming now to other functions of a State, the most obvious subject for conjecture is that suggested by the tendency in recent times of governments (and following their example of municipalities) to engage in trade. The comment which gained currency over a decade ago, that we were all socialists then, is still more justified now. Will States continue their increasing practice of usurping the place of private adventurers? Will railways, canals, telephonic and teleautographic systems, street conveyances, and so forth, be owned and controlled by various public authorities, after education, some other functions, including the feeding and clothing of poor children during school age, and the care of the unemployed (which States before long will certainly have embraced) have by a more enlightened polity been returned to the proper hands? The whole question of whether socialism is a probable solution of the difficulties which its advocates believe it capable of solving is here involved. Applying our familiar principle of estimating the tendencies of the future by the trend of events in the past, it seems certain that there will for a good many years immediately to come be an increase in the functions assumed by the State: but that the whole plunge into socialism will not be undertaken. For, while measures undisguisedly socialistic in character are more and more advocated and adopted, the open principle of State socialism seems to find less support every year. Whenever distress becomes prevalent, plenty of writers, for instance, loudly denounce Governments for not finding work for everyone who fails to find work for himself--so long as he is a man! (No one appears to think it the Government's duty to find work for women.) But when socialism is openly propounded, the same authors just as vehemently denounce the socialistic system to which this principle of regarding the State as the duty-bound employer of the workless clearly tends. What will most likely happen is that devices, more and more socialistic, for dealing with emergencies, and inconveniences of various sorts, will be adopted and maintained until their own inconvenience and injustice have made themselves felt: and then a more reasonable age will get rid of them--better remedies having meantime been discovered--at the same time perceiving their deleterious effect upon private responsibility, and wondering why it has tolerated the old methods so long. In other words, socialistic experiments will have demonstrated their own evils before the habit of indulging in