What these limits may be it is impossible to discuss here. Any general discussion of such a point would be meaningless. Each case or measure must be discussed on its own merits. But, though it is impossible to state what the limits are, it is exceedingly easy to show on what they depend. They depend on two analogous and all-important facts, one of which I have already explained and dwelt upon, and which forms, indeed, one of the principal themes of this volume. This is the fact, that the most powerful of our productive agents, namely Ability, cannot be robbed, without diminishing its productivity, of more than a certain proportion of the annual wealth produced by it; and, as it is from this wealth that most of the Socialistic fund must be appropriated, Socialistic distribution is limited by the limits of possible appropriation. The other fact—the counterpart of this—is as follows. Just as Ability is paralysed by robbing it of more than a certain portion of its products, Labour may equally be paralysed by an unwise distribution of them; and thus their continued production be at last rendered impossible. ◆¹ For instance, quite apart from any initial difficulty in raising the requisite fund from the wealthier class of tax-payers, the providing of free meals for children in Board Schools is open to criticism, on account of the effect which it might conceivably have upon parents, of diminishing their industry by diminishing the necessity for its exercise. Whether such would be the effect really in this particular case, it is beside my purpose to consider; but few people will doubt that if such a provision were extended, and if, even for so short a time as a single six months, free meals were provided for the parents also, half the Labour of the country would be for the time annihilated. Labour, however, is as necessary to production as is Ability, even though, under modern conditions, it does not produce so much; and it is therefore perfectly evident that there is a limit somewhere, beyond which to relieve the individual labourer of his responsibilities by paying his expenses out of a public fund will be, until human nature is entirely changed, to dry up the sources from which that fund is derived. [Sidenote ◆1 The sort of natural limit that there is to its beneficial effects is shown by the history of our Poor Laws.] [Sidenote ◆2 Such Socialism, whatever good it may do, can never do much in the way of raising money wages.]