We notice in Forward, an ably conducted Socialist news- paper
published iu Glasgow, a letter from Lord Balfour of Burleigh replying to an " Open Letter" addressed to him shortly before. The discussion is conducted with much courtesy on both sides, and we think that Lord Balfour of Burleigh is very well advised to accept challenges of this kind, and argue the case fully and scientifically with Socialists in circumstances into which the prejudices of party warfare do not enter. Definition, as Lord Balfour says, is urgently required. The editor of Forward, for instance, accepts the phrase Lord Balfour used in a recent letter to the Press, that "the earnings of each individual should be securely preserved to him." Socialists, he retorts, desire nothing better. And no doubt that phrase does totident verbis cover a large part of the Socialistic creed; only, as Lord Balfour very cogently points out, Socialists demand that their earnings (as estimated by themselves) shall be secured to them under conditions
which would injure the sources of the profits out of which the earnings have to be paid:—
"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 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, that in turn must diminish production and must therefore increase prices, and that increase would naturally fall hardest on those who are least well off."
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