Modern Socialism - the new economic gospel - is the most specious, and the crudest tissue of fallacies, that has ever threatened society, or disgraced any man who wishes to rank as a thinker. Property is theoretically robbery, and under the present system society, we are told, is becoming every year more intolerable. If it be true what is asserted - that the rich are constantly getting richer, and the poor poorer - we must be fast hastening to the inevitable social catastrophe described by Goldsmith:

"Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, but men decay."

But it is a serious responsibility to address the populace as to their rights and excite their passions in telling them how they have been wronged, unless you can support your theory by unimpeachable evidence. The party of progress is too apt to undervalue statistics and pervert facts in trying to prove that the gulf between classes is widening, and that the rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. Mr. Hyndman, speaking of society as at present organized, says: "We have, as a result, on the one side, a class working far too hard for health, and living in miserable social conditions; on the other side, a class which works not at all with its hands, and enjoys luxury in excess of what is reasonable; and," he adds-this is a most important part of the statement-" the gradation between the