If it takes too long a revolutionary explosion may wreck civilization. Equality of income can be attained and maintained only in a settled and highly civilized society under a Government with a highly trained civil service and an elaborate code of laws, fortified by general moral approval. The process of its establishment will necessarily be dangerously slow rather than dangerously quick; for we are not educated to be Socialists: we teach children that Socialism is wicked. The material advantages of the steps towards Socialism are, however, biassing proletarian parents, who are in a huge majority, more and more in favor of the movement towards Socialism. This tendency is helped by the moral revolt against the cruelty of Capitalism in its operation and the sordidness of its principle. In a Socialist State economic selfishness would probably stand on the moral level now occupied by cardsharping instead of being held up as the key to social eminence. 391 79 SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY Nervous dread of over-regulation produced by the endless inspections and restrictions needed to protect the proletariat from unbridled Capitalist exploitation. These would have no sense in a Socialist state. Examples. Preoccupation of the police with the enforcement of private property rights and with the crimes and disorder caused by poverty. The drink question. Drink the great anæsthetic. Artificial happiness indispensable under Capitalism. Dutch courage. Drugs. Compulsory prophylactics as substitutes for sanitation. Direct restrictions of liberty by private property. “The right to roam.” Deer forests and sheep runs. Existing liberties which Socialism would abolish. The liberty to be idle. Nonsense about capital and not labor being source of wealth. The case of patents and copyrights. Unofficial tyrannies. Fashion. Estate rules. The value of conventionality. 393 80 SOCIALISM AND MARRIAGE