The intellectual socialists of to-day, and many of their less educated followers, will strenuously deny this.  They will declare that they, unlike their predecessors, recognise that directive ability is a true productive agent no less than ordinary labour is; and that able men, no less than the labourers, have rights which they may, if they choose, enforce with equal justice.  And if we confine our attention to certain of their theoretical admissions, we need not go further than the pages of the present volume to remind ourselves that for this assertion there are ample, if disjointed, foundations.  But the doctrine of modern socialism must be judged, not only by its separate parts, but also by the emphasis with which they are respectively enunciated, and by the mood of mind which, on the whole, it engenders among the majority of those who are affected by it; and, whatever its leading exponents may, on occasion, protest to the contrary, the main practical result which it has thus far produced among the masses has been to foment the impression, which is not the less efficacious because it is not explicitly formulated, that when labour and ability are disputing over their respective rights, ability comes into court with no genuine rights at all; and that, instead of representing (as it does) the knowledge, intellect, and energy to which the whole surplus values of the modern world are due, it represents merely a system of decently legalised theft from an output of wealth which would lose nothing of its amplitude, but would on the contrary still continue to increase were all exceptional energy, knowledge, and intellect deprived of all authority and starved out of existence to-morrow.

So long as such an impression prevails, and indeed until it is definitely superseded by one more in consonance with facts, no satisfactory social policy is practicable.  Labour, as opposed to ability, may be compared to a man who believes that his tailor has overcharged him for a coat, and who disputes the account in a law court with a view to its reasonable reduction.  In such a case it will be possible for him to obtain justice.  The tailor’s claim for L12 may be reduced to a claim for L10, or L8 5_s._, or L6 15_s._ 6_d._ But if the customer’s contention is that he ought to get the coat for nothing, and that he does not in justice owe the tailor anything at all, he is making a demand that no law court could satisfy, and by a gratuitous misconception of his rights is doing all he can to preclude himself from any chance of obtaining them.  The mood which socialism foments among the labouring classes is precisely analogous to the mood of such a man as this, and its results are analogous likewise.  Its origin, however, being artificial and also obvious in its minutest particulars, the remedy for it, however difficult to apply, is not obscure in its nature.  The mood in question results from a definite, a systematic, and an artificially produced misconception of the structure and the main