public authority took rent
there would be no need of rates; that is the more obvious proposition.
But the ampler one is the cruelty, the absurdity and the social injury
of the constant consumption of unprotected savings which is an
essential part of our present system.

It is a doctrinaire and old-fashioned Socialism that quarrels with the
little hoard; the quarrel of modern Socialism is with the landowner
and the great capitalist who devour it.

Sec. 4.

While we are discussing the true attitude of modern Socialism to
property, it will be well to explain quite clearly the secular change
of opinion that is going on in the Socialist ranks in regard to the
process of expropriation. Even in the case of those sorts of property
that Socialism repudiates, property in land, natural productions,
inherited business capital and the like, Socialism has become
humanized and rational from its first extreme and harsh positions.

The earlier Socialism was fierce and unjust to owners. "Property is
Robbery," said Proudhon, and right down to the nineties Socialism kept
too much of the spirit of that proposition. The property owner was to
be promptly and entirely deprived of his goods, and to think himself
lucky he was not lynched forthwith as an abominable rascal. The first
Basis of the Fabian Society, framed so lately as 1884, seems to
repudiate "compensation," even a partial compensation of property
owners, though in its practical proposals the Fabian Society has
always admitted compensatory arrangements. The exact words of the
Basis are "without compensation though not without such relief to
expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community." The
wording is pretty evidently the result of a compromise between modern
views and older teachings. If the Fabian Society were rewriting its
Basis now I doubt if any section would insist even upon that
eviscerated "without compensation."

Now property is not robbery. It may be a mistake, it may be unjust and
socially disadvantageous to recognize private property in these great
common interests, but every one concerned, and the majority of the
property owners certainly, held and hold in good faith, and do their
best by the light they have. We live to-day in a vast tradition of
relationships in which the rightfulness of that kind of private
property is assumed, and suddenly, instantly, to deny and abolish it
would be--I write this as a convinced and thorough Socialist--quite
the