nt for anyone except in doing things that must be done on
the spot, such as unpacking and distributing the imports, ministering to
the proprietors as domestic servants, or by acting, preaching, paving,
lighting, housebuilding, and the rest; and some of these, as the
capitalist comes to regard ostentation as vulgar, and to enjoy a simpler
life, will employ fewer and fewer people. A vast proletariat, beginning
with a nucleus of those formerly employed in export trades, with their
multiplying progeny, will be out of employment permanently. They will
demand access to the land and machinery to produce for themselves. They
will be refused. They will break a few windows and be dispersed with
a warning to their leaders. They will burn a few houses and murder a
policeman or two, and then an example will be made of the warned. They
will revolt, and be shot down with machine-guns--emigrated--exterminated
anyhow and everyhow; for the proprietary classes have no idea of any
other means of dealing with the full claims of labor. You yourself,
though you would give fifty pounds to Jansenius's emigration fund
readily enough, would call for the police, the military, and the Riot
Act, if the people came to Brandon Beeches and bade you turn out and
work for your living with the rest. Well, the superfluous proletariat
destroyed, there will remain a population of capitalists living on
gratuitous imports and served by a disaffected retinue. One day the
gratuitous imports will stop in consequence of the occurrence abroad of
revolution and repudiation, fall in the rate of interest, purchase of
industries by governments for lump sums, not reinvestable, or what
not. Our capitalist community is then thrown on the remains of the last
dividend, which it consumes long before it can rehabilitate its extinct
machinery of production in order to support itself with its own hands.
Horses, dogs, cats, rats, blackberries, mushrooms, and cannibalism only
postpone--"

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Sir Charles. "On my honor, I thought you were
serious at first, Trefusis. Come, confess, old chap; it's all a fad of
yours. I half suspected you of being a bit of a crank." And he winked at
Erskine.

"What I have described to you is the inevitable outcome of our present
Free Trade policy without Socialism. The theory of Free Trade is only
applicable to systems of exchange, not to systems of spoliation. Our
system is one of spoliation, and if we don't abandon it, we must ei