a scale too large for the available capital. Coöperative enterprises that have succeeded have begun in a small way, proportioned to the means of their founders, and have enlarged by degrees. That the projects of Owen were not inherently absurd and impossible is shown by later successes on the same principles; his experiments were wrecked on obstacles that better directed enterprises avoided. He discovered that it is not enough to devise social machinery; social man is needed to work it; and social man cannot be made out of hand, he must be slowly developed.

Owen's significance in the history of Socialism is mainly as a propagator of ideas. Even in this, his service was often of doubtful value, for his frankness and benevolence won for many of his ideas a respect that their intrinsic quality did not deserve. On the other hand, some of his later vagaries cast a reproach equally undeserved on his socialistic theories.. When he was past eighty he fell under the influence of certain persons, it matters not whether dupes or impostors, who made of him an ardent believer in spiritualism. His lax views on marriage also did not commend his Socialism to Britons of any class. It is hardly possible to regard his career as other than a failure, in spite of his excellent intentions, his considerable abilities, and the correctness of some of his social theories.

III

The Reform bill of 1832 was thought by Macaulay and the Liberal statesmen of his generation to be the proper sequel to the Revolution of 1688; on the ground that, while the Revolution had brought the Crown into harmony with Parliament, the bill had been necessary to

bring Parliament into harmony with the nation. But this harmony soon proved illusory. The Reform bill did away with some of the most anomalous features of the English political system. "Three niches in a stone wall" no longer sent two representatives to the House of Commons, but as a £10 qualification was still required of voters in boroughs, and for the county franchise a man must be a leaseholder or copyholder, it is obvious that only the middle class was benefited. The shopkeeper and the manufacturer had now their political rights, but the artisan and the laborer were no better off than before. What gave additional edge to their disappointment and exasperation was that the middle class had used the discontent of the working people as a means of exacting the concessions obtained, only to cease all effort as soon as their own grievance was redressed. Poor harvests and commercial depression combined to make the lot of the workers more grievous; and the operation of the new Poor Law of 1835 was deeply resented, especially in the rural districts. Instead of a cessation of the social unrest and political agitation on the passage of the Reform bill, as had been confidently predicted by its advocates, there seemed to be even greater dissatisfaction after "reform" than before, and a prospect that the agitation would be interminable.

The reign of Queen Victoria opened among such unpromising conditions, and a few weeks before her coronation a great radical meeting was held at Birmingham, at which a petition was adopted for presentation to Parliament, that afterwards became known as the Charter, while the party that advocated it were called Chartists. These demands, the people's charter of liberties, as they

were then deemed, do not seem in the least radical now. Briefly summarized, the things demanded were six: (1) Universal suffrage (by which was really meant manhood suffrage); (2) equal electoral districts; (3) vote by ballot; (4) annual Parliaments; (5) no qualification for a seat in Parliament but choice by electors; (6) payment of members of Parliament. All of these were certainly fair matters of debate, reforms that might reasonably be asked and advocated by peaceful means, as is attested by the fact that all but the second and sixth of these demands have been conceded, or substantially so, and the sixth has been promised by a Liberal ministry. Yet in the thirties a storm of objection and protest and criticism was poured out on the advocates of these reforms, as if they were threatening to lay the British constitution in ruins and undermine the very foundations of society.

But if the opposition to Chartism was unreasonable, it must be confessed that its advocacy was equally without reason. More was hoped and expected from these political changes than they were in any way fitted to bestow. Now that they have been mainly granted, the condition of the poor of England is little improved, and whatever improvement there may be is certainly to be ascribed to some other source. But the most extravagant claims were put forth: "The Charter means a good home, good food, prosperity, and shorter working hours." How it could have been rationally expected to give all, or any, of these things passes comprehension. Misled by these social expectations, more than attracted by the political features of the movement, the workingmen took part almost as one man in the agitation for the

proposed reforms. Immense meetings were held to advocate the Charter, at some of which a hundred thousand people are said to have been present. In 1839 the House of Commons refused even to receive a petition in favor of the Charter, and this denial of a fundamental right produced many riots in different parts of the kingdom. There was a serious prospect at one time of a general uprising of the working-class, in which event much bloodshed and suffering could not have been averted. The government acted with great firmness and energy, rather than with wisdom. The meetings of Chartists were forbidden; those held were broken up; leaders of riotous demonstrations were prosecuted, convicted, and by hundreds either imprisoned or transported. The agitation rapidly declined, leaving the working-classes greatly embittered against those who had shown that they still possessed the power of the State, and meant to use it whenever necessary to maintain their supremacy.

One of those who had a deep sympathy with the wrongs of the working-men, and wished to see them righted, was Thomas Carlyle. If his knowledge of social forces had been equal to his hatred of all injustice and oppression, he might have spoken a prophet's word to his England. The best word that he could speak was his "Past and Present," an eloquent and stimulating book in many ways, but utterly inapplicable to the social conditions, and, considered as a proposed solution of England's troubles, supremely ridiculous. For the remedy that Carlyle, in good faith, proposed for the ills under which nineteenth-century England was groaning was a return to the England of Henry II! He might as reasonably have proposed a return to the stone age.

Another solution offered was less irrational, but hardly more practical. It was known as Christian Socialism, and its origin is generally ascribed to Frederick Denison Maurice, though Charles Kingsley did more than any other to popularize its principles. Maurice established the Christian Socialist in 1848, as the organ of the movement, which, according to its founder, opposed equally "the unsocial Christians and the unchristian socialists." The Christian socialists avowed no definite social scheme, but were deeply impressed by the brutality of the doctrines taught by the English economists. Kingsley had no words adequately to express his scorn of the "narrow, conceited, hypocritical, anarchic, and atheistic scheme of the universe" that lay, as he thought, at the base of the accepted political economy of his day. "We believed," wrote Maurice afterwards, in explanation of the motives of the group, "that Christianity has the power of regenerating whatever it comes in contact with, of making that morally healthful and vigorous which apart from it must be either mischievous or inefficient. We found, from what we know of the working-men of England, that the conviction was spreading more and more widely among them, that Law and Christianity were merely the supports and agents of capital. We wished to show them both by words and deeds that Law and Christianity are the only protectors of all classes from the selfishness which is the destruction of all." 1

Christian Socialism, therefore, as its chief advocates understood it, was the belief that the Church is intended to be an organization for the promotion of social right

1 "Life of Frederick Denison Maurice," 2 vols. New York, 1884, II: 92.