have deserved if we had not done it. Whether it be that we have abstained from killing or robbing our fellow-citizens for our own advantage, or have impoverished or half-killed ourselves in the service of the State, our meed is the same. Loris non ureris. Non pasces in cruce corvos, is what we are told. We may congratulate ourselves on having escaped the cat-o'-nine-tails and the gallows. Well, we have, most of us, so much self-sufficiency, that to deprive us of all ground for it might be a fault on the right side. But now comes a second and more awkward reflection. If you will not of your own accord do your duty, those to whom performance of the duty is owing have a right to use means to make you—foul means if fair means will not avail. If, then, you hesitate to do your utmost for the interests of society, society is warranted in taking measures to accelerate your movement. If you are not, or what is practically the same thing, if a numerical majority of your fellow-citizens think you are not, making the most beneficial use of your property; if it be generally considered that it would be for the greater good of the greater number to divide your park and garden into peasant properties and cottage allotments, to double the wages of the workmen in your employment, or to subject you and the likes of you to a graduated income tax for the purpose of setting up national workshops to compete with you in your own trade; and, if you do not readily enter into the same views, then the said numerical majority are not simply warranted in taking the law into their own hands and doing, in spite of you, what they think ought to be done with your property, but would be culpably remiss if they neglected so to act.

Now it is needless to dwell on the extent to which that large numerical majority of our fellow-citizens which consists of the working classes is imbued with this notion, nor, except to those who are similarly imbued, can it be necessary to insist that there is no notion of which it is more indispensable to disabuse the working-class mind. This, accordingly, I strove to do throughout a recent work of mine, 'On Labour,' particularly in the chapter which treats of the claims and rights thereof. I there earnestly pleaded that there may be, and are, private rights independent of utility which no public needs can cancel; that all which any man, or set of men, is entitled to exact from another is payment or fulfilment of what is due to him or them from that other; that unless the poverty of the many has been caused by the few, the many are not warranted in extorting relief of their wants from the few; that the mere circumstance of their being without food or work does not entitle the poor to be fed or employed by the rich, for that there is likewise a justice independent of and superior to utility, consisting simply of respect for rights, while injustice consists simply of violation of rights.