matters that the share of its own products which is made over to the labourers shall be large enough, and obvious enough, and sufficiently free from accessory disadvantages, to be appreciated by the labourers themselves; and the ideal state of social equilibrium would be reached when this share was such that any further augmentation of it would enfeeble the action of ability by depriving it of its necessary stimulus, and, by thus diminishing the amount of the total product, would make the share of the labourers less than it was before.

Though an ideal equilibrium of this kind may be never attainable absolutely, it is a condition to which practical wisdom may be always making approximations; but in order that it may be an equilibrium in fact as well as in theory, one thing further is necessary—­namely, that both parties should understand clearly the fundamental character of the situation.  And here labour has more to learn than ability; or perhaps it may be truer to say that socialism has given it more to unlearn.  If any exchange takes place between two people, which by anybody who knew all the circumstances would be recognised as entirely just, but is not felt to be just by one of the contracting parties, he, though he may assent to the terms because he can get none better, will be as much dissatisfied as he would have been had he been actually overreached by the other.  If, for example, he believed himself to be entitled to an estate of which the other was in reality not only the de facto, but also the true legal possessor, and if the other, out of kindness (let us say) towards a distant kinsman, agreed to pay him a pension, he would doubtless accept the pension as a something that was better than nothing; but he would not be satisfied with a part when he conceived himself to be entitled to the whole, and as soon as occasion offered would go to law to obtain it.  In other words, if two persons are to make a bargain or contract which can possibly satisfy both, each must start with recognising that the other has some valid right, and what the nature of this right is, to the property or position which is held by him and which is the subject of the projected exchange.  Unless this be the case, any exchange that may be effected will, for one of the parties at least, not be a true bargain or contract, but an enforced and temporary compromise.  There will be no finality in it, and it will produce no content.

Now, in the case of the bargain or contract between labour and ability, this last situation is precisely that which the teachings of socialism are at present tending to generalise.  They are encouraging the representatives of labour to regard the representatives of ability as a class which possesses much, but has no valid right to anything, and with whom in consequence no true bargain is possible; since, whatever this class concedes short of its whole possessions will merely be accepted by labour as a surrender of stolen goods, which merits resentment rather than thanks, because it is only partial.