SOCIALISTIC DOCTRINE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "Srxervron:1 SIR,—It seems to me that the most pressing want of the day is a short and simple exposure of the fundamental error of Socialistic teaching, which is, that the expenditure of the rich is all at the expense of the poor. The exposure should be in- telligible to ordinary respectable people who are not political economists, and should be such as would justify the position of such people in their own eyes, and make them no longer ashamed (as many are) of being rich, and no longer afraid (as many * It is unfortunate that in EngliA, as in modern languages generally, we cannot express the fact that to save and to heal (crio'CsiP) are one and the same things in the minds of the New Testament writers, are) of spending their money in elegant living, lest they be accused of "wasting and rioting" while so many are "starv- ing." Only last week, in a railway carriage, I heard a respect- able man lamenting that as muoh money was " wasted " in the West-End of London "in a week" as would "keep all the poor in the East-End for a month." It seems to me that the employment that the expenditure of the rich (I mean their personal expenditure) creates for the poor is entirely over- looked by Socialists, and is very imperfectly realised by the respectable classes themselves. It seems to me, indeed, that A who gives, say, a guinea for an early peach in Covent Garden prevents as much poverty by paying for the labour bestowed on growing that peach, as B relieves by giving a guinea to a charity. This, of course, is only Mandeville's old doctrine, and it is liable to abuse ; but it seems to me that the total forgetfulness of the great amount of truth there is in it is a present danger and scandal.—I am, Sir, &c., W. M.
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