Such, for example, was the position maintained by the Christian Socialists of England thirty years ago--a band of noble patriotic men who strove hard, by word and deed, to bring all classes of the community to a knowledge of their duties, as well as their interests, and to supersede, as far as might be, the system of unlimited competition by a system of universal co-operation. They inveighed against the Manchester creed, then in the flush of success, as if it were the special Antichrist of the nineteenth century. Lassalle himself has not used harder, more passionate, or more unjust words of it. Maurice said he dreaded above everything "that horrible catastrophe of a Manchester ascendancy, which I believe in my soul would be fatal to intellect, morality, and freedom"; and Kingsley declared that "of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, anarchic, and atheistic schemes of the universe, the Cobden and Bright one was exactly the worst." They agreed entirely with the socialists in condemning the reigning industrial system: it was founded on unrighteousness; its principles were not only un-Christian, but anti-Christian; and in spite of its apparent commercial victories, it would inevitably end in ruin and disaster. Some of them had been in Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848, and had brought back with them two firm convictions--one, that a purely materialistic civilization, like that of the July Monarchy, must sooner or later lead to a like fate; and the other, that the socialist idea of co-operation contained the fertilizing germ for developing a really enduring and Christian civilization. Mr. J. M. Ludlow mentioned the matter to Maurice, and eventually a Society was formed, with Maurice as president, for the purpose of promoting co-operation and education among the working classes. It is beyond the scope of the present work to give any fuller account of this interesting and not unfruitful movement here; but it is to the purpose to mark two peculiarities which distinguish it from other phases of socialism. One is, that they insisted strongly upon the futility of mere external changes of condition, unattended by corresponding changes of inner character and life. "There is no fraternity," said Maurice, finely, "without a common Father." Just as it is impossible to maintain free institutions among a people who want the virtues of freemen, so it is impossible to realize fraternity in the general arrangements of society, unless men possess a sufficient measure of the industrial and social virtues. Hence the stress the Christian Socialists of England laid on the education of the working classes. The other peculiarity is, that they did not seek in any way whatever to interfere with private property, or to invoke the assistance of the State. They believed self-help to be a sounder principle, both morally and politically, and they believed it to be sufficient. They held it to be sufficient, not merely in course of time, but immediately even, to