poverty and wealth, and they desire to see a redistribution of property by some means, of which they have hardly thought out the details. They recognise to the full the institution of private property, and are in that sense as individualist as the individualists, and they derive their main support from those who, not having property, want to have it.
Socialism of this kind is that to which the late Sir W. Harcourt referred when he made use of the well-known expression, "We are all Socialists now," and its danger lies mainly in its indefiniteness. It does not accept the underlying principles of State Socialism, whilst it is prepared to accept, by instalments, a large part of its programme under the name of "social reform"—a rather question begging phrase. Mr Balfour recently defined the distinction between Socialism and social reform. I have not his words by me, but they were to the effect that whilst Socialism aims at the abolition of private property, and the control of the means of production by the State, social reform will have nothing to do with such things, but starts from the basis of the institution of private property. That, however, being once granted (he continues), social reform recognises that it is the duty of the State to levy contributions upon the well-to-do for the benefit of their poorer neighbours. With such a definition, broadly speaking, no one will quarrel. Everyone recognises the necessity of taxation for Poor Law purposes, and for many other purposes connected with the well-being of the community, such as education and the like. But it is not difficult to see that the definition is not a sufficient one for practical purposes, and that it might be so applied as to carry out in practice most of the proposals initiated by the Fabian Society. I think that I shall have no difficulty in showing that this
