◆¹ But an equality of this kind, from a practical point of view, is worth considering only as a means of reducing it to an absurdity. Even were it established to-morrow, it could not be maintained for a month, owing to the difficulty that would arise in connection with the question of children: as unless a State official checked the weekly bills of every parent, parents inevitably would save out of their children’s allowances; and those with many children would be very soon founding fortunes. And again it is obvious that different kinds of occupation require from those engaged in them unequal expenditures; so that the inevitable inequality of needs would make pecuniary equality impossible. Indeed every practical man in our own country owns this, however extreme his views; ◆² as is evidenced by the amounts which have been suggested by the leaders of the Labour Party as a fit salary for a paid Member of Parliament. These amounts vary from _three hundred pounds_ a year to _four hundred pounds_; so that the unmarried Member of Parliament, in the opinion of our most thoroughgoing democrats, deserves an income from six to eight times as great as the utmost income possible for the ordinary unmarried man. And there are many occupations which will, if this be admitted, deserve to be paid on the same or on even a higher scale. We may therefore take it for granted that the most levelling politicians in the country, with whom it is worth while to reason as practical and influential men, would spare those incomes not exceeding _four hundred pounds_ a year, and would probably increase the number of those between that amount and _a hundred and fifty pounds_. Now the total amount of the incomes between these limits is not far from _two hundred million pounds_: so if this be deducted from the _twelve hundred million pounds_ which we just now took as the sum to be divided equally, the incomes of the people at large will be less by sixteen per cent than the sums at which they were just now estimated; and the standard of average comfort will be represented by a childless man and wife having _thirty-one shillings and eightpence_ instead of _thirty-eight shillings_ a week. [Sidenote ◆1 General redistribution, then, is not thought possible by any English party;] [Sidenote ◆2 But it is still instructive to consider the theoretical results of it.]