The renewal of the socialist agitation has not been unproductive of advantage, for it has led to a general recognition that the economic position of the people is far from satisfactory and is not free from peril, and that industrial development, on the lines on which it has hitherto been running, offers much less prospect than was at one time believed of effecting any substantial, steady, and progressive improvement in their condition. It is only too manifest that the immense increase of wealth which has marked the present century has been attended with surprisingly little amelioration in the general lot of the people, and it is in no way remarkable that this fact should tend to dishearten the labouring classes, and fill reflecting minds with serious concern. Under the influence of this experience economists of the present day meet socialism in a very different way from Bastiat and the economists of 1848. They entertain no longer the same absolute confidence in the purely beneficent character of the operation of the principles at present guiding the process of industrial evolution, or in the sovereign virtue of competition, unassisted and unconnected, as an agency for the distribution as well as the production of wealth; and they no longer declare that there is not and cannot possibly be a social question. On the contrary, some of them take almost as unfavourable a view of the road we are on as the socialists themselves. Mr. Cairnes, one of the very ablest of them, says: "The fund available for those who live by labour tends, in the progress of society, while growing actually larger, to become a constantly smaller fraction of the entire national wealth. If, then, the means of any one class of society are to be permanently limited to this fund, it is evident, assuming that the progress of its members keeps pace with that of other classes, that its material condition in relation to theirs cannot but decline. Now, as it would be futile to expect, on the part of the poorest and most ignorant of the population, self-denial and prudence greater than that actually practised by the classes above them, the circumstances of whose life are so much more favourable than theirs for the cultivation of these virtues, the conclusion to which I am brought is this, that unequal as is the distribution of wealth already in this country, the tendency of industrial progress--on the supposition that the present separation between industrial classes is maintained--is towards an inequality greater still. The rich will be growing richer; and the poor, at least relatively, poorer. It seems to me, apart altogether from the question of the labourer's interest, that these are not conditions which furnish a solid basis for a progressive social state; but having regard to that interest, I think the considerations adduced show that the first and indispensable step towards any serious amendment of the labourer's lot