than ruin. It can mean no process of levelling up - no levelling up to the higher conditions, no levelling up even to the middle ones, but a general levelling down to a level below the lowest. Presently, too, it would be seen to mean something beyond this. It is conceivable that, through the appliances of civilization, the people might unite so as to destroy civilization; but they would be parting with their strength in the very act of using it. The appliances through which they could unite, either physically or in sentiment, are appliances that would go to ruin if they ceased to labour to maintain them; and with the falling to pieces of this vast material tissue, the proletariat would be once more disunited, once more broken into fragments, torn asunder by local ignorance and by local interests, and would consequently once more fall under the dominion of the stronger few. Inequality would be seen to be a phoenix, which not only, if it died, would die amidst flames and ashes, but which out of those very ashes would be sure to redevelop itself" (W. H. MALLOCK).

It is too often assumed that "wealth is the cause of poverty; it is not so; nor would the distribution of existing wealth produce, even for a single week, a diffusion of competence. Wealth, capital, are the results of "thrift," and can only be had by self-denial. In every great and in every progressive society, wealth has always been present. It is by the accumulations of the "thrifty, self-denying class" that we have risen, step by step, out of barbarism-by which we have risen to knowledge, to a higher standard of life, and to a conception of rational freedom. Acquisition is God's law, by which is secured progressive