the final emancipation of the working classes, can only be effected by the equal distribution of labour of all kinds amongst all the members of the community.

ST1

CHAPTER XLVI.-MINIATURE MODEL COMMUNITIES.

T. SIMON, Robert Owen, and Fourier, have each given detailed descriptions of isolated social communities, and Robert Owen even made a practical experiment of his plan by the settlement of a new social colony at New Lanark, in Scotland, which after a few years of successful and promising efforts began to decay, and was ultimately abandoned. In America various religious sects have, for many years past, been living in so-called social communities, the same as the Moravian Brethren, who have a similar settlement in the Black Forest, in Germany. Although the religious tenets of these sects may be different, they have, however, one institution common to them all, and this is the community of property, of land, houses, and pecuniary interest, etc.; and it is this most important of all social ties that alone can assure the happiness of a community and the success of a settlement.

All attempts at solving the social question by model communities based on the community of property, however successful they may be, will nevertheless remain powerless in exercising any great influence on the present state of society; for the rich will refuse to become members of similar social communities, well knowing that in the presence of and in close contact and intercourse with all the members of the community, they could no longer indulge in luxury, idleness, and dissipation; and the poor, as also the working classes, have not the means to raise the necessary funds for the purchase of land, cattle, agricultural implements, and other requisites, in order to found new and well organised social colonies; and the rudest settlement of this kind in the backwoods and prairies of America, if even the land were given gratuitously, could not be successful without the means of emigration to, and transit through the American continent. But, although all these material hindrances might be overcome by patience and perse

verance, there remain, however, other insurmountable obstacles which will never permit that the area of a country be parcelled out into miniature social establishments, presenting on a map a similar regularity of the divisions of the country as the wellknown square fields of the chess-board. The two great social reformers, Fourier and Robert Owen, in advocating the establishment of miniature social communities, overlooked two circumstances that are greatly adverse to the foundation of small and isolated social establishments, which should maintain themselves both by agriculture and manufactures, industry and handicrafts. The first is the impossibility of localising trades and occupations which, in their nature and mode of working and organisation, have a tendency to become nationalised,—such as the post business, telegraphs, railways, and especially the seafaring occupation, which scatters itself over the distant ocean. Trades and occupations like these cannot be directed and worked by innumerable isolated communities, but must stand under a central directory like that of a board of railway directors and managers, the postmaster-general, etc. The second circumstance which acts as an impediment to the division of the population into localised sections is to be found in the fact that certain occupations must, for ever, be confined to certain localities, as mining to the mines, quarrying to the quarries, dock labour to the seaports, etc. These occupations cannot be distributed all over the country in order to let every local community share and manage them, for they are more suitable for national organisation, which is already to some extent prepared by the great mining and dock and navigation companies. These are the true precursors of the national direction of all trades, manufactures, and occupations. Agriculture is likewise acquiring a semi-detached character, at least, in England; for certain counties are entirely laid out in grasslands, while in others cattle breeding is paramount; and this is done in order to adapt the best sort of agriculture to the nature of the soil. If miniature social communities were established, they would either have to break up the national character and counteract the success of many of the most important and numerous trades of the people, or they, themselves, would have to become communities in one district for grass growing, and in another for cattle breeding, for cotton.

spinning in one locality, and for coal mining in another; an absurdity that was certainly never dreamt of either by Fourier or Robert Owen. Miniature social communities may, moreover, be considered as great obstacles to the nationalisation of all trades; for instead of having, for instance, only one great shoe manufactory, in which all the shoes of the whole nation are made, the separate social communities would each have several shoemakers amongst their members, who would make shoes in the place where they dwell,-an arrangement that would not permit the great economy in the distribution of leather and other materials to be realized, which the one great national shoe manufacture can alone effect.

The Associated Home, as already described in this book, has nothing in common with the phalanstères of Charles Fourier or the parallelograms of Robert Owen. Both these socialist writers endeavoured to concentrate all manufacture, industry, and trades into each of their proposed communities; whilst the Associated Home, as explained in previous chapters, is merely an institution and an arrangement for saving domestic and distributive labour, and places all productive labour, manufactures, mining, all the skilled trades, etc., into other and often distant localities, and under the immediate direction and control of the state. The Associated Home will, therefore, have no workshops, factories, brick and stone yards, in its neighbourhood, and will, therefore, be greatly dissimilar to Fourier's phalanstère, which provides access to all manner of work, either under the roof of the social palace, or in its immediate vicinity.

CHAPTER XLVII.-ARGUMENTS WHICH RAISE THE QUESTIONS WHETHER THE PRECEPTS OF MORALITY, THE DICTATES OF RELIGION, AND THE ENACTMENTS OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAW ARE SALUTARY AND EFFICACIOUS.

WHAT have moralists and apostles of religion been preach

ing for upwards of two thousand years? They have insisted upon the subjugation of the flesh and evil desires, the suppression of bad words, and the omission of evil deeds. Have they succeeded to any great extent? It is doubtful.

If premeditated murders have decreased to a small extent, when compared with the increase of population in general, manslaughters and suicides are, on the contrary, more numer ous now than at any former period of the world's history. At times suicides become suddenly so numerous, that they are spoken of as an inexplicable mania; in other instances they seem to be committed in imitation of each other; but we see in the frequent occurrence of this lamentable selfdestruction of human life the dire results of pernicious influences to which all persons are exposed in the present state of society, which drive them to despair, and induce great numbers of people to terminate an existence that has become unbearable to them. The comparatively small decrease of wilful murders, of which civilization is apt to boast, is, in the opinion of the author, rather apparent than real; and he suspects that it is more owing to the watchfulness of a greatly increased police force, and their efficient means of detecting crimes, than to any great efficacy of religious and moral teaching, or of any secret influence that civilization itself may exercise on the prevention of murders. The means of detection, especially the use of the telegraph and photograph, have rendered the escape of murderers nearly impossible; and, in consequence, murders, coupled with the self-destruction of the murderer, become more and more frequent. With the cunning of the detective, that of the murderer increases in direct ratio; and this is the reason why undetected murders are alarmingly on the increase. The subtlety and ingenuity of the present detective police force, and their watchfulness for the prevention of crime, will, however, be far surpassed by the means which the future social state will have at its command for preventing and tracing crime. By the abolition of money the mainspring of the escape of criminals will be broken, and by all persons being lodged and boarded in the Associated Homes, the whereabouts of every individual will be exactly known to many; and as no food and dwelling can be obtained elsewhere, hunger would soon drive the escaped criminal into the precincts of the Associated Home, and his inexplicable absence would forcibly point to his guilt.

The total abolition of the manufacture, importation, and use of intoxicating drinks will, in the future social state, remove many

violent murders, murderous assaults, and suicides from the annals of crime; and the writer supports his belief in this great reformatory agent, by referring to the reiterated challenge made by Mr. Cruikshank to the English public, to point out to him one single instance where, within the last forty years, a teetotaler has committed any capital crime.

It is stated that lesser crimes and transgressions of the laws of civilized society are on the increase. Such is the case with prostitution, theft, robbery, fraud, embezzlement, etc. Cases of drunkenness are also of frequent occurrence, and unless the total suppression of the liquor traffic can be enacted, the noble example of a reformed life given by so many members of the Temperance Society, is likely to exert little impression upon those abandoned to the vicious habit of excessive drinking.

Vagrancy and begging are rampant, and the desertion of wives by their husbands is so alarmingly on the increase that it causes, according to Sir Charles Trevellyan's statement in the Times, no small addition to that class of paupers who live in their scantily furnished apartments, in which very often no bed is to be seen, and where they sleep on the floor covered with dirty rags. The destitution to which deserted wives with their children are reduced before they come to a resolution of applying for admission into the workhouse, and the state of pauperism which produces the deadly famine fever, so fatal to the children of the poor, obviously condemn the present social system. Surely civilized society has covered itself with eternal shame for permitting poverty and destitution to breed loathsome and infectious diseases from the accumulation of dirt and neglect of cleanliness. An old proverb says, "Cleanliness is next to godliness;" the practical truth of which is, that there is no godliness where there is no cleanliness, and that it is useless to preach religious and moral precepts in dirty rooms and to people in dirty rags; for anyone attempting to introduce the cardinal virtues and graces of Christianity into these abodes of squallor and filth must be prepared, practically, to meet the rejoinder that will be made to him in the words of Christ, "Give to the poor."

*The removal of these dens of filth and infection is now legally enforced by the Artizans' Dwellings Act; a measure that is called a communistic expedient by Mr. Thorobald Rogers, a correspondent in the Daily News.