laws against the practice of usury; and although these wise enactments have of late, and to the regret of many, been revoked, the proposals of the most advanced amongst the radicals of our own time intend, on the contrary, to attack the power of money in a more effective and radical manner than was ever done by the old usury laws; for they propose even a progressive income tax to be levied on all accumulated capital.*

The true social reformer, however, regards all these measures as inefficient for the eradication of the evil, and sees in the total abolition of money the only means by which a better organization of society can he promoted; for he is convinced. that all other attempts to reform the present social order, whatever may be their aim and purpose, will prove failures as long as money shall co-exist with them.

The very day money is abolished, the inexorable law that if a man does not work neither shall he eat, will become a stern reality, and society will, as by magic, arrive at an equitable arrangement of the division of labour and distribution of produce. With the abolition of money, a great number of persons who are now engaged as bankers, banker's clerks, money-dealers, money-lenders, money-changers, and others of similar occupations, will become available for the performance of useful labour in the production and distribution of commodities, and the waste of labour and time, which now accompany every payment where change is to be given, -the tediousness of which is in no instance more provoking than in the process of a multitude of persons making payments and receiving change at the booking offices of railway stations, will entirely be done away with.

With the abolition of money there will also cease those pitiful lamentations at the loss of coins, and of purses con

"Citizens whose income does not exceed what is necessary to their subsistence, are dispensed from contributing to the public expenditure. The rest ought to contribute progressively, according to the extent of their fortunes."-12th article of Robespierre's "Rights of Man."

"Taxation ought chiefly to be levied on superfluities, and ought not only to be proportional, but also progressive."-Rousseau.

Robert Owen's "Charter of the Rights of Humanity" proposes to raise the whole revenue of a state by a graduated property tax, and to organise a system of national employment and universal education.

taining small or large sums of money; and the trade of the pickpockets, thieves, embezzlers, and forgers, will totally lose its lucrative prospects and dangerous allurements, and this not only by the radical change that no more coins, banknotes, checks, shares, and other representatives of money shall remain in circulation, but also by the fact that these depredators will not by any means be able to obtain one single day's shelter and food without having performed their due share in the allotment of national labour.

Money having once come into total disuse, society will be spared the sad necessity of inflicting upon many of its members punishments of imprisonment ranging from a few days to a long term of years, not unfrequently preceded, or accompanied at regular intervals, by flogging. The criminals thus punished are truly to be pitied, for society could, by the abolition of money, and by placing all property into the hands of the state, have removed the causes and motives of, and allurements to the crimes.* This is especially true of the crime of forgery, by which large sums of money and valuable property are now often obtained without incurring the danger of the highwayman, robber, and garrotter, who, very often, have to encounter a life-and-death struggle with their victims that may leave easy traces of detection behind it. In the new social state no one will take the trouble of forging coins, banknotes, or checks, for all property being vested in the hands of the state, and being through them distributed to all the members of the community without the intervention of money, the forged coins or papers could afford no means for the acquisition of any valuables or consumable commodities, such as food, cloth, dwelling, etc. In its regenerated state, society will no more have occasion to treat any of its members like the four men, Austin Biron Bidwell, George Macdonnell, George Bidwell, and Edwin Noyes, who on the 23rd of August, 1873, were found guilty of forgeries, by which they deprived the Bank of England of £102,000 in hard cash, and for which they were sentenced to penal servitude for life.

*The Paris newspaper, La France, says:- "A day will come when that arsenal of useless punishments, sufferings, and cruelties, called the penal system, will disappear; the judge will be replaced by the doctor, the gaoler by the nurse, the hangman by the schoolmaster, the tribunals by hospitals, and expiation by education."

The non-existence of money in the future social state will, moreover, have a highly sanitary influence upon the people; for it will prevent intemperance and gluttony and other excesses, which they now are prone to indulge in, by having at their uncontrolled command the power of money.

The abolition of money will also put a final check upon betting and gambling, and people will then hear no more of those painful and distressing scenes of despair and frequent suicides that follow heavy losses and reverses of fortune in unsuccessful gambling and betting transactions.

By the suppression of money, prostitution will have the principal object of its existence removed, and theft, fraud, embezzlement, robbery, and forgery, having likewise vanished, the greater number of crimes will have disappeared, and also the sufferings on account of their punishments, and so much more happiness will then prevail.

The proposed abolition of money raises, however, two questions of an apparent difficulty, which the author is, however, quite ready to answer in, he thinks, the most satisfactory manner. These questions are-How is the commerce with foreign nations, who still keep money, to be carried on? and, What is to be done with the precious metal when the gold and silver coins are once melted down?

The first of these questions is solved by the arrangement which permits the Government of the new social state to retain a certain amount of bullion, either in coins or bars, as a means of carrying on the trade with foreign countries. This international trade by means of money will be entrusted to official trading agents, or commissioners, whose transactions will probably not amount to one-tenth part of the value of the present imports and exports; for, in the new social state, all transit trade will become unnecessary, as the Government will not trade to enrich themselves, but will merely carry on foreign commercial intercourse for the sake of obtaining the requisite amount of goods and materials for the consumption and industry of the home country.

*

This system of trading by Government agency will, more

* In Fraser's Magazine for October, 1875, Mr. Bret Harte speaks of a golden time" when commerce shall be taken out of the hands of rogues and gamblers, and effectually organized under the Board of Trade."

over, possess the great advantage of exactly fixing the amount of goods to be imported; for the amount of their consumption is previously known by the state being the controller, director, and manager of all trades and manufactures. The state, as the sole manufacturer and proprietor, would indulge in no over-production, or make purchase of goods and materials which would lie idle in the national storehouses. In this manner, supply and demand would be strictly regulated, and not produce those oscillations between scarcity and repletion so common in the system of commerce by individual traders.

The precious metals, as a medium of commercial interchange, might even, by proper arrangements with foreign traders, be entirely dispensed with, and barter, pure and simple, become the mode through which the Government agents might deal with other nations. Barter is even at the present time the great soul and essence of foreign commerce. The shipper, for instance, who brings a vessel laden with cotton goods to India, does not return in ballast only, but will take in other goods in the very place of his debarkation. He is most likely to ship opium to China, and there exchange it for tea and silk, and return homewards with this last cargo. This is, in the opinion of the author, a system of barter which becomes the more necessary the further distant the countries are to which goods are sent; and it is mostly owing to this that the trade between Russia and China, which is one of some magnitude, especially on the Siberian frontier, is still carried on by a system of barter, or reciprocity, that obliges the respective traders of both nations to a mutual exchange of goods corresponding to equivalents in their value.

Trade carried on by barter would have to rely on the valuation of goods by official appraisers, appointed from both sides of the trading nations; and valuation of this kind might, in the end, prove more satisfactory than the estimates private traders now make in the purchase of goods, and who, in spite of their most careful inspection, are often taken in, and have all their vigilance and precaution set at nought by a regular system of fraud, short weight and measure, and adulterations of innumerable kinds. Besides having been defrauded in a foreign country, private traders have no redress; but if the commerce were carried on by the Government of a country, the

whole power of the nation could be brought to bear upon the rectification of interchange on the part of foreign nations.

Concerning the amount of gold and silver that would still remain in the hands of the Government, after part had been set aside for the carrying on of foreign trade, we would point out the useful employment of the remainder (or even of the whole of the precious metal, in case the state should be able to establish commercial reciprocity with foreign nations without the interchange of money) in the manufacture of useful plate. Silver spoons and silver forks might then come into common use, silver candlesticks might replace brass and tin ones, and elegant golden and silver vases for fruit and flowers, might be seen to adorn the dining tables of the Associated Home.

Gold and silver will, in all these instances, not only serve as an ornament for artistic display, but they will also cause a great saving of labour in cleaning.

When the beauty of the new social system becomes apparent to all, and when a universal conviction of the feasability of its introduction gains ground by a scientific treatment of the social problem, the very possessors of money themselves will hasten with joy to deposit their gold and silver in the national vaults appropriated for the reception of precious metals; and these very men will with alacrity consign their bank-notes, check-books, bills of exchange, and shares to the flames!

CHAPTER XXVI.—RESTRICTION OF ISOLATED HOMES AND REGULATIONS OF SEXUAL UNIONS.

THE

HE exclusiveness of the present isolated households is to be superseded to a great extent by the development of the Associated Home and facilities of social intercourse.

The ideal of the Associated Home is a large square building not unlike Somerset House or Buckingham Palace; with four mighty wings, several stories high, inclosing a spacious courtyard, with fountain and flower-beds. This noble mansion, to be inhabited by several thousand persons, will contain not only the dormitories and dwelling apartments of the inmates, but also several large dining halls, assembly rooms, libraries, reading rooms, bath rooms, a spacious kitchen, and a common heating