The conception of property and its rights, they show, has changed through the course of history: why may it not be so again? Property under the feudal régime was not the same as property to day under most civil laws. The right of bequest had been altered; the right of succession had been interfered with and regulated by law. Why might not the like be done again? especially if it can be demonstrated to be necessary to raise the condition of the mass of the nation-the true aim of both practical morality and religion.

They considered the subject of rent, and found that the modern landowner is not entitled to receive it while he discharges no duties. In the middle ages it was necessary to pay rent, or its equivalent in produce, in order that the chief and his soldiers should be subsisted for the military needs of the time. Those who fought, who defended the goods and persons of all, had to be supported by those who worked. It is not so now; and the surplus produce, due to the different qualities of land, should not go to the proprietor, but to the nation as a whole. Only so far as the proprietor is himself cultivator fruits.

should he reap the

Coming to Capital, we find that the St. Simonians had new and original views that never dawned upon the Master. According to Enfantin, capital in the form of instruments and means of future labour does not belong to, and should not be regarded as the property of, the individual in such a sense that he could deal with it as he pleased. It belongs to the community, which would have to keep it up in the capitalist's absence, under peril of future penury. Capitalists

are the depositaries, the stewards, the "intendants," to use the St. Simonian word, of this capital; the revenue coming from it, after paying wages and materials, is at present allowed to them as profits, and very high they are; but the principal, the capital itself, is not theirs morally. It is true the law allows them to regard it as theirs, to do with as they please. They could consume it unproductively; and individuals often do. But what proves the community's paramount claim is the consideration that if this practice were general the community would be ruined, and it would then perforce have to withdraw the trust from the present trustees and managers of the fund. The community's claim to the capital lies latent; there would be no need to assert it if the capitalists made the best use of the national principal, if they managed it at the least expense, with the greatest intelligence, and made its product the greatest; and, lastly, if they made an equitable partition between themselves and their assistants. But do they? the St. Simonians go on to ask. Far from it. That they do not manage it with intelligence is proved by the frequent industrial crises, in which there are violent and irrational transfers of capital and losses of capital; the sudden ruin of individuals; the paralysis of production and trade; and from which the working classes thrown out of work receive the most violent strokes of all. They do not adjust production to consumption, to the wants of the public, because they have not sufficient knowledge. Now the Government could procure such knowledge, and could adjust supply to demand whether home or foreign. Then the existing

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system is one of competition between producer and producer, and between distributor and distributor, with the result that they frequently ruin each other; their avowed object being, as far as possible, by a system of under-selling, to ruin rivals, without much gain to the public; because, when they have cleared the field sufficiently, the survivors change their tactics, and raise their prices on the buyer.

The proprietors of capital are only depositaries, and "what is saved from past labour ought not to be in the exclusive interest of individual enjoyment." This, according to M. Paul Janet, is "le nœud de la théorie," and the meaning is that savings should either be added to capital, which is common property, or be divided fairly for consumption, but that in neither case should they be regarded as the capitalist's property.

Closely connected with this view of capital and of property is their cure for the existing evils. It consists simply in the abolition of hereditary succession. A son shall neither succeed to his father's savings nor to his father's function. All savings, at death, revert to the State, and become the property of the community. This is a consequence of their fundamental and famous principle of distribution: "From each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its works." This, they say, is the only principle of distribution that is at once just and natural in the sphere of material production. It is a natural principle, and the earliest. If alone, a hunter, a fisher, a tiller of the ground, got according to his Janet's "Saint Simon et le Saint-Simonisme,” p. 93.

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works; if working in association he should get so likewise, were there any means of discriminating the amount of his contribution to the product, and of comparing the value of one product with another, both of which can, however, be done with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes. It is the only just principle that he should get in proportion as he contributes. But such a system would give to the man already favoured by nature, an objector may say. No doubt; but that seems to be Nature's intention, too; at any rate, it would work better than the present system, which keeps back the man favoured by Nature, by bestowing the means of life and all else. according to the chance of birth, from which it follows. that capacity is kept back and crushed by incapacity, and society loses much thereby. Our Revolution, they say, was the first great assertion of this fact and intention of Nature; the first great rising of Talent against the hereditary usurpation of its seat at the banquet of life, a rising against Privilege, an emphatic declaration that ability will have its opportunity, and will not suffer exclusion in the name of a dying fetish. Let us all take our places in future according to this principle, and let promotion be by merit, measured in the same way. The hindmost will then have no cause of complaint against society, while his lot will be much mitigated under our system, as compared with what it is at present.2

St. Simon, they say, protested against "les oisifs," and justly; he did not point out the cure. It lies here -in the abolition of inheritance. Destroy that, and

2❝Saint Simon et le Saint-Simonisme,” p. 90, et seq.

each new generation collectively enters on its total collective inheritance, is the successor to the last, and to all its functions and offices, the rewards of which shall be rated respectively at what they are worth by the most expert valuators of the time. Each one will then get his due place in the grand army of Industry, his fair portion of the total of its fruits. His future will be according to merit, which will be measured by his work and the promise of further work.

By the abolition of inheritance the State becomes the owner of land and capital, the necessary instruments of production. The next step is to organize production; for which purpose it must itself undertake all industries, and thereafter appoint the hierarchy of workers. What it does in the Army, the Universities, the Civil Service, say the St. Simonians, it can do universally. The rewards will not be equal; they will be in proportion to the work, and the grade of advancement in it; but there will be no more exploitation of the working classes, because there will be no more great capitals in private hands. If a well-paid official chooses to save he may do so; but at his death his savings go back to the State. The individual will thus have little inducement to save, but also there will be little need for it, as his future and that of his children will be assured. If any one objects that the stimulus to labour will be withdrawn under the system, the St. Simonians reply that the hope of promotion will be a sufficient stimulus. But they agree with the founder of the Sect, that a new religion and morality will be necessary before men can be brought to see the justice of their