would suffice to cover all current demands. If, however, contrary to our expectation, we should find that we erred on one side or the other, we should not look upon this as a great misfortune. The satisfaction of having secured to ourselves means sufficient to meet our requirements at all times will not appear to us to have been too dearly bought even if it prove that we have paid a few shillings or pounds more than was necessary; and, on the other hand, if the premiums should prove to have been too small, the deficiency will be at once made up out of the resources of the commonwealth. 'Perhaps you will ask what right we have in this way to burden future generations to the profit of their ancestors? The same right that we have continually to project into the future the claims upon the maintenance-allowance. As you know, these are entirely discharged out of the current public revenue, no reserve being accumulated for this purpose, the principle acted upon being that the workers of the present have to support the invalids of the past. Our parents when incapable of working are maintained out of the proceeds of our labour; and when we in our turn become incapable of working, it will be the duty of our children to support us out of the proceeds of their labour. It is no favour which we show to our parents and expect from our children, but a right--a right based upon the fact that each successive generation enjoys not merely the fruits of its own labour, but also the fruits of the labour of its predecessors. Without the treasures of knowledge and inventiveness, of wealth and capital, which we accumulate and bequeath, our posterity would be very poorly provided for. And if the next generation should find itself called upon to make up any deficit in favour of those of their parents who--it is immaterial on what ground--held an extraordinary increase in their maintenance-allowance to be necessary, we should not find any injustice in that, because the payments of the insured at once found employment in such a way as to benefit not merely the present, but also the future. The insurance-premiums have already accumulated to milliards; they have been invested chiefly in railways, canals, factories--in short, in works in aid of labour, most of which will endure for many generations. You may therefore regard the additional sums which may _possibly_ have to be paid by the workers of the future to the insured of to-day as an insignificant interest subsequently levied by the latter upon the former; or, what is simpler still, you can imagine that the fathers retain for their own use until the end of their lives a part of the wealth they themselves have earned, and then at their death bequeath their whole property to their descendants.' Here David ended his instructions for the time; and I will imitate him. ---- CHAPTER XVII Eden Vale: Aug. 2, ----