Says Professor Alfred Marshall, of Cambridge, the great English
Economist, in his luminous Address at the British Association
meeting:--
"Every year economic problems become more difficult, every
year it is more manifest that we need to have more knowledge
and to get it soon, in order to escape, on the one hand, from
the cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition and the
licentious use of wealth, and, on the other, from the tyranny
and the spiritual death of an iron-bound Socialism."
Here be judicial truths, skilfully _Marshalled_ into clear order,
which may profitably be noted by the angry sciolistic skirmishers on
one side and the other in the great Social War now raging.
The sniffing _Laissez-faire_ man, the high and dry Economist, shrieks
at the enthusiastic humanitarian Socialist, whom he would fain send
to Anticyra,--or further; the headlong humanitarian Socialist howls at
the high and dry Economist, whom he would like to despatch finally to
Saturn, or "haply to some lower level," as BOB LOWE's epitaph had it.
The result is cantankerous charivari!
Marshall does more and better. He emphasises "the cruelty and waste of
irresponsible competition," he admits "the licentious use of wealth,"
but he also recognises "the tyranny and the spiritual death of an
iron-bound Socialism," that violent and venomous form of Socialism,
which _Mr. Punch_ this week has represented under the apt symbol of a
clinging, hampering, and suffocating Serpent.
Let the impetuous zealots who may probably demur to _Mr. Punch's_
symbol--misunderstanding it--ponder Professor MARSHALL's words, and be
not precipitate in judgment. There is Socialism _and_ Socialism. The
sort pictured by Professor MARSHALL, and _Mr. Punch_, is, like the
Serpent of Old Myth, not the would-be friend of labour-cursed mankind,
but a deceiving and glosingly deadly "incarnation of the Enemy."
* * * * *