When Men Become Angels.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXIV, Issue 3675, 7 January 1908, Page 3

When Men Become Angels.

The Forward, a weekly journal devoted to Socialism and Trade Unionism, published in Glasgow, publishes a letter from Lord Balfour of Burleigh, on "Why I am fighting Socialism." Lord Baltour says that the essence of any scheme for a 'working plan of Socialism is that a very large proportion of the earnings of each individual are to be taken from him in the form of taxation, and presented to those who have not earned it,either the nation at large or some section of the nation. This obviously tends to equalise the condition of men who earn with the condition of the men who do not earn, thus diminishing the incentive to earn. This, in turn, must diminish production, and must, therefore, increase prices, and that increase would naturally fall hardest on those who are least well off. The advance of civilisation, he adds, has in the past been practically guided wholly by the enterprise of individuals; enterprise is guided very largely by the desire for wealth, and any scheme for the confiscation of private wealth must act adversely upon enterprise. In conclusion, he says: "Those who describe themselves as Socialists point out the evils of the present state of society. I for one will not deny those evils, but I do affirm that Socialism will not remedy them, but will make them worse. Socialists seem to me to forget that society is composed of individuals, and that where the character of the individual is imperfect, it will be impossible to have a state of society which is devoid of evils. We all feel, some perhaps more than others, where at the present time the shoe pinches, but a wholesale subversion of the existing structure of society will not remedy .those evils, and if we depart from the watch-words of honesty, liberty, and independence we are bound to fail. In a sense, we all may be Socialists now, but in the words of the late Bishop of London, 'Socialism cannot succeed till all men become angels, and then there will be no need for it.' "