Sydney Olivier’s “Moral Basis” is, in parts, as obscure now as it was at first, and there are pages which can have conveyed but little to most of its innumerable readers.  Graham Wallas treated of “Property” with moderation rather than knowledge.  Time has dealt hardly with Mrs. Besant’s contribution.  She anticipated, as the other Essayists did, that unemployment caused by labour-saving machinery would constantly increase; and that State organisation of industries for the unemployed would gradually supersede private enterprise.  She apparently supposed that the county councils all over England, then newly created, were similar in character to the London County Council, which had already inaugurated the Progressive policy destined in the next few years to do much for the advancement of practical socialism.  The final paper on “The Outlook,” by Hubert Bland, is necessarily of the nature of prophecy, and in view of the difficulty of this art his attempt is perhaps less unsuccessful than might have been expected.  He could foresee the advent neither of the Labour Party, mainly formed of Trade Unionists, nor of Mr. Lloyd George and the policy he represents:  he assumed that the rich would grow richer and the poor poorer; that Liberals would unite with Tories, as they have done in Australia, and would be confronted with a Socialist Party representing the dispossessed.  Possibly the developments he sketches are still to come, but that is a matter which cannot be discussed here.

* * * * *

I can find no trace in the records of the Society that the first success of their publication occasioned any elation to the Essayists, and I cannot recollect any signs of it at the time.  The Annual Report mentions that a substantial profit was realised on the first edition, and states that the authors had made over the copyright, “valued at about L200,” to the Society; but these details are included in a paragraph headed “Publications,” and the Essays are not mentioned in the general sketch of the work of the year.

In fact the obvious results of the publication took some months to materialise, and the number of candidates for election to the Society showed little increase during the spring.  It is true that great changes were made in the organisation of the Society at the Annual Meeting held on March 28th, 1890, but these were in part due to other causes.  The Executive Committee was enlarged to fifteen, and as I happened to be available I was appointed paid secretary, half time, at the modest salary of L1 a week for the first year.  The newly elected Executive included the seven Essayists, Robert E. Dell, now Paris correspondent for several journals, W.S.  De Mattos, for many years afterwards an indefatigable organiser for the Society, and now settled in British Columbia, the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, Mrs. L.T.  Mallet, then a prominent member of the Women’s Liberal Association, J.F.  Oakeshott, of the Fellowship of the New Life, and myself.