We read in the 1917 edition of Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, that ’The growing importance of distribution as a practical problem has led to an increasing mutual interpenetration of economic and ethical ideas, which in the development of economic doctrine during the last century and a half has taken various forms.’ [5] The need for some principle by which just distribution can be attained has been rendered pressing by the terrible effects of a period of unrestricted competition.  ’It has been widely maintained that a strictly competitive exchange does not tend to be really fair—­some say cannot be really fair—­when one of the parties is under pressure of urgent need; and further, that the inequality of opportunity which private property involves cannot be fully justified on the principle of maintaining equal freedom, and leads, in fact, to grave social injustice.’[5] In other words, the present condition of affairs is admitted to be intolerable, and the task before the world is to discover some alternative.  The day when economics can be divorced from ethics has passed away; there is a world-wide endeavour to establish in the place of the old, a new society founded on an ethical basis.[7] There are two, and only two, possible ways to the attainment of this ideal—­the way of socialism and the way of Christianity.  There can be no doubt the socialist movement derives a great part of its popularity from its promise of a new order, based, not on the unregulated pursuit of selfish desires, but on justice.  ’To this view of justice or equity,’ writes Dr. Sidgwick, ’the socialistic contention that labour can only receive its due reward if land and other instruments of production are taken into public ownership, and education of all kinds gratuitously provided by Government—­has powerfully appealed; and many who are not socialists, nor ignorant of economic science, have been led by it to give welcome to the notion that the ideally “fair” price of a productive service is a price at least rendering possible the maintenance of the producers and their families in a condition of health and industrial efficiency.’  This is not the place to enter into a discussion as to the merits or practicability of any of the numerous schemes put forward by socialists; it is sufficient to say that socialism is essentially unhistorical, and that in our opinion any practical benefits which it might bestow on society would be more than counterbalanced by the innumerable evils which would be certain to emerge in a system based on unsatisfactory foundations.

[Footnote 1:  We must guard against the error, which is frequently made, that, because the classical economists assumed self-interest as the sole motive of economic action, they therefore approved of and inculcated it.]

[Footnote 2:  P. 401, and see Marshall’s Preface to Price’s Industrial Peace, and Ashley, op. cit., vol. i. pt. i. p. 137.]

[Footnote 3:  Political Economy, p. 268.]