.

But there is one question which ought first to be asked, and which I have seldom seen asked when Socialism is discussed. What is Socialism? We should surely commence with definitions. I am an outsider, not an expert. But am I wrong in supposing that Socialism properly means the subordination of the individual to the community. If this be so, then Socialism is only a question of degree. Society without a certain amount of Socialism is an impossibility. We have Socialism now. Every law, every tax, every army, every prison, every policeman, is a Socialistic institution. And the only practical question for us is, how far shall Socialism be carried? We English have found that the further, within certain limits, the rights of the individual can be allowed to extend, the greater the prosperity our country enjoys. It seems pretty clear that we have carried it rather too far, and that we should be better off if some more restraints were put on individual liberty. But there can be little doubt that if we went to the opposite extreme, we should be infinitely worse off, as long as human nature remains what it is. My friend the Archdeacon gave a guarded approval of the municipalisation so much in fashion just now. But it is exposed, in the present condition of humanity, to two very serious dangers. First, the principle of popular election will not always provide us with the men most fitted to manage our affairs, and next, as hundreds of instances have of late made plain to us, we cannot get rid of unfair partiality and of corruption in the action of municipal and other bodies. It would, as the Archdeacon reminds us, be the extreme of folly to place ourselves under the control of a handful of men, who by reason of the incompetency of the individual elector to form a sound judgment, will in all probability be found more or less unfit for the responsible task entrusted to them. The impulse of self-interest and regard for one's family has, since the world began, been the strongest incentive to individual and social well-being. And the Archdeacon well reminds us of the deadening effect on a growing child of destroying all hope and spring in its life by the knowledge that he cannot follow the bent of his own nature, but must be bound hand and foot and all his native impulses crushed by the irresistible despotism of an all-powerful governing body. The Archdeacon tells us of the hope of benefiting his kind that animates the Socialist. But that hope may reasonably be balanced by a well-grounded fear that the

absolute rule of the many over the few, even if those few be chosen by the many, will be found the most grinding and penetrating despotism that has ever been known since the creation of man.

Mr. J. SCHWARTZ, Jun., writes :-A considerable number of fellow Christians would strongly dissent from the lecturer's sweeping statements that "Socialism is inconsistent with Christianity" and that "Christian anarchist seems almost a contradiction in terms."

If Christ's teachings on social obligations to His generation are taken to be of universal application then Tolstoy's deductions of passive anarchism and other systems of Christian communism are unanswerable. I think them mistaken because they underrate the limitations imposed by Christ's manhood: His teaching, although subject as regards worldly knowledge, to the limitations of a Galilean peasant, is most wise as applied to the then existing conditions. Interest on money He condemned because then, as still in the East, it was wickedly usurous. Property then was the result of force or fraud, not of industry and ability, and He said that it should be given up. How wise a saying was "Resist not evil" to the turbulent Jews hopelessly under the heel of the tyranny of Rome; what misery would they have avoided had they followed it.

These teachings Christ did not intend to apply to a self-governed modern state of which probably He had not the least conception. The communistic community of the early Church was the natural outcome of the mistaken notion of the speedy end of the world and not an example for all time. At the end of the tenth century, when Satan was expected to be let loose, a somewhat similar position was created in medieval Europe.

The power of Christ for all time is in His spiritual teaching and ideal personality as ably put by our lecturer. All right-minded people who know the facts, deplore the inequalities of wealth and opportunity that have grown up. If the personal character of all or even if a majority conformed to Christ's teaching, it would be quite immaterial whether there was a socialistic or individualistic form of society, all would be well.

In dealing with the masses in their present state of moral and mental development the rugged virtues of sturdy independence and the pluck with which they face their difficulties would soon wither away under the blight of grandmotherly influence.

The sensitive sentimental natures who inaugurate such movements

would soon be elbowed out by the glib-tongued materialistic demagogues, who would tickle the vanity and excite the greed of the lower strata of the poor. History would repeat itself. The Girondins of the French Revolution were thus supplanted by the Jacobins, followed by chaos, bloodshed and the old order re-established.

Social amelioration must be gradual. The immediate doubling of working class incomes, a boon to many, would, I am convinced, show an evil balance of increased drunkenness, gambling, crime, and laziness. If anyone doubts it let him go round the public houses on a Saturday night (pay day).

All who desire to raise humanity must work hard and intelligently and be satisfied if they see slow progress; they must speak boldly against the canker of ostentatious vulgar luxury, and the feminine craze of fashion and overdressing; they must cultivate the simple life and intellectual pleasures: strengthen the law against financial thimble rigging, and wisely tone down the injustices of the past without shattering the social fabric.

Colonel ALVES writes :-I have for many years been in favour of Tariff Reform with a view to the protection of our home industries and those of our dependencies. This is seen by many. But what I do not see commented on, and what I believe to be equally important, is the attitude of Trades Unions which, beginning as protectors of the wage earners, have now become the tyrannical masters of the employers. Until their power for evil is curtailed, I do not think that even Tariff Reform will do us any great good.

We can see this amongst the leaders of the unemployed :—“ Find them work, but you must give them the Trades Union rate of wages." The Socialists' theory is :-"The wage receivers do all the work, and should receive all the profits, but never make good the losses "; and the Socialists are capturing the Trades Unions.

The Trades Union policy for many years has been that of reducing activity and skill to the level of laziness and clumsiness, with a view to "spreading-out" work over as large a surface as possible. This is one of the most mischievous forms of Socialism, tending, as it does, to the debasement of character.

I fear that many of our workers amongst the poor, having more benevolence than judgment and firmness, have been great, though involuntary, workers of mischief, through failing to realise that life is a very serious war, a war waged largely in the old way by men

clad in defensive armour and using hand-to-hand weapons. Courage, skill and discipline combined, contribute now in peace as of old in war, to the safety of the warrior who, returning in safety and honour, claimed the hand of the maiden he loved.

Now, the mere fact of an unemployable having a wife of like character and a family (such families are usually large) of children probably more degenerate than their parents, is thought by many sentimentalists to give such unemployable a right to permanent employment.

To animals, God said, "Be fruitful and multiply"; but nature destroys the unfit; and if food is scarce, the stronger let the weaker

starve.

To man God says, "Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it." This is two-fold, joined together by God, and recognised by many heathens.

If, then, men will only act as animals, I do not see that Christians, acting in their national capacity, are justified in bolstering up such to swamp the nation with undesirables who may, by intermarriage with better stocks, deteriorate the whole nation. Such bolstering up can only end in national bankruptcy, moral and financial.

In my judgment, honourable imprisonment for life, with complete segregation from the other sex, is the only remedy for this evil. Such a course should entail no great hardship, for it is well known to phrenologists that the sexual instinct ("increase and multiply ") is closely allied to the driving faculties ("replenish the earth ").

There are doubtless other causes operating connected with the land, feudal rights divorced from feudal duties; the laws of succession which, in England, are not in accordance with God's Old Testament laws as regards estate, either real or personal; and perhaps other disagreeable hard facts; all of which must be faced.

492ND ORDINARY

GENERAL MEETING.

ORDINARY GENERAL

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH, 1909.

LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR HENRY GEARY, K.C.B. (V.P.)
IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following candidate elected as an Associate of the Institute :

Herr Pastor Flügel, Germany.

The following paper, illustrated by lantern slides, was then read by the Author :

DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA AND THE NEIGHBOURING LANDS. By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S.

RADUALLY, but surely and ever more speedily, Assyriology is becoming the most important study in the domain of Oriental archæology. The language of the Babylonians and Assyrians proves to be a tongue of the most engrossing importance, whilst that of the seemingly earlier race the Sumerians-with which it was brought into contact, is regarded by some as the coming study for those who wish to acquire renown as true archæological linguists. But besides the languages, with their dialects, a very specially interesting and important field of study is their archeology in general, their beliefs, their manners and customs, their arts and sciences, and the geography of the land. Whether we shall ever obtain information as to their original home, we do not know, but we may, by chance, acquire, ultimately, the information needed to find out where that place may have been; and in any case, we shall know all the better what influence those nations may have had in the world, to say nothing of the bearing of their records on the all-important subject of Bible history, thought, and beliefs. A number of closely-connected nations whose influence extended from Elam on the east to the Mediterranean