false, and so this reasoning, being upon a false premise, is unsound.

The social history of the last century gives us as its most prominent feature the rise of the middle class, and a steady amelioration in the condition, payment, and the rights of citizens in the lower class-the diminishing in every way, of the gradation between the rich and the poor. Yet Mr. Chamberlain, in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1883, writes : "Never before in our history was the misery of the very poor more intense, or the condition of their daily life more hopeless and more degraded.... The vast wealth which modern progress has made has run into 'pockets;' individuals and classes have grown rich beyond the dream of avarice, but the great majority of the 'toilers and spinners' have derived no proportionate advantage from the prosperity which they have helped to create." Mr. Chamberlain, from his position and the statistics at his command, ought to know better. You must use your own common sense, and study the history of the last century, and make up your own mind which is correct. It should not be difficult to know whether riches are getting more or less diffused, the rich stronger or less strong, the poor becoming bettor fed or verse fed ; whether they are sinking to the level of misery, and the tendency of things as they are is to turn England into a clique of millionaires and a nation of beggars, or into a nation of well-to do workmen and well-to-do capitalists. Is it true, as stated by Karl Marx, that "the misery, the oppression, the slavery, the degradation of the working class grow in proportion to the diminution in numbers