Professor Huxley writes a very able letter to Thursday's Times,
showing that on the assumptions of Mr. Laidler's version of the Spencerian "absolute ethics," States have no more right to the land within them than individuals, the whole surface of the earth properly belonging to the whole human race, and no one having any true right to any portion till the human race has parcelled it out fairly amongst them. Without "a cosmopolitan plebiscite," no nation or State could claim any right to its land at all. Yet, if one of the primitive village communities had been told by any missionary of " absolute ethics " that the rest of mankind had any right to interfere with the land of that village community, such a mis- sionary of "absolute ethics" would, says Professor Huxley, in all probability have been short-lived. History betrays no trace of the recognition in primitive times of land theories based on absolute ethics. Further, history shows that in bringing about the change from collective to individual property, industrialism has done at least as much as militarism. It is not force more than labour which has promoted the individual ownership of land. Mr. Laidler will read Professor Huxley's letter with interest, but he will not like it. The new Socialism craves a metaphysical basis, and sickens at historical confutations of its theories.
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