We say that there is a moral strain already intolerably severe and growing more severe with every perfection of Capitalism. This moral strain comes from a contradiction between the realities of Capitalist and the moral base of our laws and traditions. The moral base upon which our laws are still administered and our conventions raised presupposes a state composed of free citizens. Our laws defend property as a normal institution with which all citizens are acquainted, and which all citizens respect. It punishes theft as an abnormal incident only occurring when, through evil motives, one free citizen acquires the property of another without his knowledge and against his will. It punishes fraud as another abnormal incident in which, from evil motives, one free citizen induces another to part with his property upon false representations. It enforces contract, the sole moral base of which is the freedom of the two contracting parties, and the power of either, if it so please him, not to enter into a contract which, once entered into, must be enforced. It gives to an owner the power to leave his property by will, under the conception that such ownership and such passage of property (to natural heirs as a rule, but exceptionally to any other whom the testator may point out) is the normal operation of a society generally familiar with such things, and finding them part of the domestic life lived by the mass of its citizens. It casts one citizen in damages if by any wilful action he has caused loss to another--for it presupposes him able to pay. The sanction upon which social life reposes is, in our moral theory, the legal punishment enforceable in our Courts, and the basis presupposed for the security and material happiness of our citizens is the possession of goods which shall guarantee us from anxiety and permit us an independence of action in the midst of our fellowmen. Now contrast all this, the moral theory upon which society is still perilously conducted, the moral theory to which Capitalism itself turns for succour when it is attacked, contrast, I say, its formulae and its presuppositions with the social reality of a Capitalist State such as is England to-day.