These latter, besides taking part during their year of office in the proceedings of the managing council, are charged with very specific and important duties of brotherly kindness towards such members of the Society as, by reason of sickness or distress of any kind, stand in need of its active intervention. The visitors serve only one year `at a time; the officers, on the contrary, are re-eligible. The conseil de famille regulates the admission of new members to the Society, the administration of aid during sickness and at death, and the assignment and payment of pensions, life insurances, &c. It also causes the books of the house to be annually inspected, in order to be able to certify that the share of profits due to the Society has been fully paid over.

The property of the Society was on the 4th of April last 43,9917., the number of its members 92, and that of its pensioners 42.

It is obvious that the organisation roughly sketched out in the preceding pages must by its very nature put those who co-operate in working it through an invaluable school of practical training in morality and public virtue. To have obtained access to the Noyau and the Mutual Aid Society by good conduct and active self-improvement, to have discharged the visitor's' duty in the homes of suffering comrades, to have sat on committees, made and received reports, contributed to important decisions, perhaps even to have been entrusted, as a member of the comité de conciliation, with weighty disciplinary powers and attendant responsibilities-every such step is itself a lesson in self-control, in humanity, in impartial conduct and judicial integrity. The workman in Leclaire's unpretentious foundation shares in fact the moral discipline which Mr. Mill has described as attaching to the participation of the private citizen in public functions. He is called upon to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to apply at every turn principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the general good; and he usually finds associated with him in the same work minds more familiarised than his own with these ideas and operations, whose study it will be to supply reasons to his understanding and stimulation to his feeling for the general good.' 8

With minds expanded and invigorated in this practical school, the members of Leclaire's house have come to grasp firmly and apply unhesitatingly conclusions which, though no doubt direct consequences of the principle of participation, would hardly be recognised as inseparably bound to it, except by minds familiar with at least the elements of political economy.

They know that the more expeditiously work is despatched, the greater will be the amount of business which the house can get through in the course of the year, and the greater the return on

8 Representative Government, p. 68.

labour which will accrue to each individual workman. Accordingly, abandoning the system of organised waste of time which was thought an excellent expedient for thwarting the master under the old system, they work with self-sustained energy during the hours of labour.

They know that if the work executed is always of the very best kind, the reputation of the house and their earnings will remain at the highest point, but that every piece of work badly done tends to drive away its custom and prejudice their own interests. Accordingly the scamping of work and the introduction of inferior or defective materials, in fact every form of trade dishonesty, is sternly discountenanced by the men themselves.

They know that the wanton destruction of tools or materials is merely one way of throwing their own money into the sea. Accordingly this proceeding, which has a certain zest about it when thought to be practised to the sole detriment of a non-participating master, is seen in its true character and replaced by a vigilant watch exercised over every article of property belonging to the house.

In these and numberless other ways the feeling of identity of interest which animates the establishment has wonderfully softened the bitter spirit of antagonism towards the possessing class to which no men are more disposed than the Parisian ouvriers. The following incident strikingly illustrates the intensity with which this sentiment of solidarity is capable of acting. A workman, dismissed a few years before for having assailed with abuse one of the managing partners, applied in 1876 for readmission to the Noyau. The formerly offended partner and his colleague readily consented, but in spite of the efforts made by the latter as chairman of the comité de conciliation, the other members of that body, on which representatives of the workmen are in a majority, decided unanimously that the former offender should remain permanently excluded from the Noyau, on the grounds that, having permitted himself to insult a partner of the house, no indulgence ought to be shown him; that the rules must be respected; and that it was better to sacrifice the interest of one man than to compromise the general interest.

M. Charles Robert informed me that, after a long experience of the proceedings of the Noyau, he considered the appointments made by them to have been uniformly good and to have justified the very great trust reposed in that body by Leclaire. In particular he referred to their recent selection, at a general meeting and without any official candidature, of a committee for adjudging prizes to the apprentices for progress in technical study, as having been extremely well managed; great care having been taken to place no one on the committee who was personally connected with any of the competitors.

Of the general moral improvement now manifest throughout the house, M. Marquot, who was private secretary to the founder and has enjoyed the amplest opportunities of watching this progress,

:

spoke to me in the strongest terms. The house-painters were, he said, at the time when Leclaire commenced his efforts on their behalf, notoriously the most dilatory, intemperate, debauched, and intractable workmen to be found in Paris. The members of the Noyau-the Old Guard' of the house, as Mr. Hall has most happily designated them—are now greatly in request among architects in consequence of their exceptional possession of diametrically opposite qualities.

The introduction of participation by workmen in the profits of employers admits of being recommended on purely economic grounds as a benefit to both the parties concerned. The increased activity of the workman, his greater care of the tools and materials entrusted to him, and the consequent possibility of saving a considerable part of the cost of superintendence, enable profits to be obtained under a participating system which would not accrue under the established routine. If these extra profits were to be wholly divided among those whose labour produced them, the employer would still be as well off as he is under the existing system. But, assuming that he distributes among his workmen only a portion of this fresh fund, and retains the rest himself, both he and they will at the end of the year find their account in the new principle introduced into their business relations.

It was on this tangible ground of mutual advantage that Leclaire by preference took his stand when publicly defending the system incorporated in his house. He constantly insisted that his conduct had been for his own advantage, and that it was better for him to earn a hundred francs and give fifty of them to his workmen than to earn only twenty-five francs and keep them all for himself. I maintain,' he wrote in 1865, that if I had remained in the beaten track of routine, I should not have arrived, even by fraudulent means, at a position comparable to that which I have made for myself.'

This may be fully admitted as far as concerns the mere stimulation of the workman's energy by the prospect of increased gain; but the most superficial glance at the great institution reared by Leclaire suffices to show that his real aims were of an entirely different order from those of the self-interested speculator with whom, in his anxiety to avoid the dangerous reputation of an innovating visionary, he professed to identify himself. He was at bottom, as M. Robert assured me, and as is indeed evident from many passages in his pnblished writings, an ardent social reformer, passionately desiring the emancipation of the wage-supported classes from the precarious situation in which the present relations between capital and labour hold them bound as though by some inflexible law of nature. It was with an eye consciously fixed on this distant goal that he thought and wrote and laboured in the immediate interests of his own work

men.

As was the case with so many of those who have applied genius to philanthropy, the fountain of Leclaire's enthusiasm was essentially religious, though of a kind unconnected with the special dogmas of any particular Christian body. How intensely he held the 'great commandment' of Christian morality appears from the following words written in sight of death when he felt 'sincerity' to be more than ever a duty: 6

I believe in the God who has written in our hearts the law of duty, the law of progress, the law of the sacrifice of oneself for others. I submit myself to his will, I bow before the mysteries of his power and of our destiny. I am the humble disciple of him who has told us to do to others what we would have others do to us, and to love our neighbour as ourselves: it is in this sense that I desire to remain a Christian until my last breath.9

We have seen what one unaided man, imbued with this victorious spirit, was able to contribute towards the solution of the great social problem of our day-how, by bettering the relations between capital and labour, to assure to the toiling masses a self-respecting present and a hopeful future. I cannot believe that this consummation will ever be reached through the conflicts of opposing self-interests: it can only be from 'economic science enlightened by the spirit of the Gospel,' 10 and pointing over the heads of lower antagonisms to a higher unity, that an ultimate solution is to be looked for.

9

SEDLEY TAYLOR.

'Je crois au Dieu qui a écrit dans nos cœurs la loi du devoir, la loi du progrès, la loi du sacrifice de soi-même pour autrui. Je me soumets à sa volonté, je m'incline devant les mystères de sa puissance et de notre destinée. Je suis l'humble disciple de celui qui nous a dit de faire aux autres ce que nous voudrions qu'il nous fût fait, et d'aimer notre prochain comme nous-mêmes; c'est ainsi que je veux rester chrétien jusqu'à mon dernier soupir.'

10 M. Charles Robert, La Question Sociale, p. 43. Paris, Henri Bellaire.

A FEW MORE WORDS ON NATIONAL

INSURANCE.

THE interest which was excited by a speech that I made last June in the House of Lords upon National Insurance, the criticisms which it provoked, the discussion which has since followed, and, lastly, the courtesy which has placed these pages at my disposal, induce me to make a few observations on the subject, not with the intention of arguing out all objections, or making any complete statement of the question, but rather in the hope of carrying on the discussion a stage further, and of showing at least that, whatever difficulties may beset the proposal of a general and compulsory insurance, the question is not to be disposed of by the simple allegation that it is chimerical and impracticable. My aim,' as Mr. Burke once said on a larger question, is to bring the matter into more public discussion. Let the sagacity of others work upon it.' I will only add that in the observations which I made in the House of Lords, and which were, perhaps, somewhat too briefly and generally reported to convey my exact meaning, I was careful not to commit myself to any figures, or details, or particular modus operandi: and I propose in this paper, for obvious reasons, to confine myself to much the same line. Let me, however, in the first place, render justice where justice is due. The idea of a National Insurance which should secure to the poorer classes a moderate provision in old age and in time of sickness, and which should have an operation wide enough to enable us to dispense with a large part at least of our system of poor relief, is not a new one. In various forms it has been frequently discussed; it was contemplated in the earlier Friendly Society Acts; it has, within the scope of private enterprise, been attempted by philanthropists like Mr. Curwen, of Cumberland, in the last century; and it has to some extent been practically carried into effect by some of the Friendly Societies and great commercial companies; but the credit of giving it distinct shape by investing it with details sufficiently full and precise to bring it into the arena of public discussion belongs to Mr. Blackley, the rector of North Waltham, Hants.

It is probable, nay certain, that if it ever receives a legislative