ven too favourable to repressive
legislation. In these commotions the Society as a whole took no part,
and its public activities were limited to a meeting at South Place
Chapel, on December 18th, 1885, addressed by Mrs. Besant.

In March, 1886, the Executive Committee was increased to seven by the
addition of Mrs. Besant and Frank Podmore, and in April Tract No. 4,
"What Socialism Is," was approved for publication. It begins with a
historical preface, touching on the Wars of the Roses, Tudor
confiscation of land, the enclosure of commons, the Industrial
Revolution, and so on. Surplus value and the tendency of wages to a
minimum are mentioned, and the valuable work of Trade
Unionism--sometimes regarded by Guild Socialists and others nowadays as
a recent discovery--is alluded to: indeed the modern syndicalist
doctrine was anticipated: the workman, it is said, "has been forced to
sell himself for a mess of pottage and is consequently deprived of the
guidance of his own life and the direction of his own labour." Socialist
opinion abroad, it says, "has taken shape in two distinct schools,
Collectivist and Anarchist. English Socialism is not yet Anarchist or
Collectivist, not yet definite enough in point of policy to be
classified. There is a mass of Socialist feeling not yet conscious of
itself as Socialism. But when the conscious Socialists of England
discover their position they also will probably fall into two parties: a
Collectivist party supporting a strong central administration, and a
counterbalancing Anarchist party defending individual initiative against
that administration. In some such fashion progress and stability will
probably be secured under Socialism by the conflict of the uneradicable
Tory and Whig instincts in human nature."

It will be noticed that even in this period of turmoil the Society was
altogether constitutional in its outlook; political parties of
Socialists and Anarchists combining progress with stability were the
features of the future we foresaw.

By this time the Society was thoroughly aware of its relation to
international socialism, and the remaining six pages of the tract are
occupied by expositions of the alternatives above alluded to.
"Collectivism" is summarised from Bebel's "Woman in the Past, Present,
and Future," and is a somewhat mechanical scheme of executive committees
in each local commune or district representing each branch of industry,
elected by universal suffrage for brie