then, the increment has not gone to the landlords. Much of it has gone, in the aggregate, to owners of capital; but while the rate of remuneration to capital has fallen, the rate of remuneration to labour has enormously increased. In 1867 the average wage paid to the manual workers-men, women, and childrenwas 301. per head; it is now at least 451., if not more. But the rise in money wages represents only a part of the improvement in the real remuneration of the manual labourer. Prices have risen in the last few years, notably in the last five, but not enough to neutralise the fall of the preceding decades. In the decade 1898-1907 prices were more than 20 per cent. lower than in that from 1878-1887. Real wages (i.e. wages as measured in commodities) rose 50 per cent. between 1850 and 1900, 25 per cent. between 1875 and 1900.16

Nor must it be forgotten that a further and substantial addition to 'real wages' has accrued from the gratuitous provision of various benefits and services furnished by individual charity or by the State. It is, indeed, estimated that such services represent an addition of 15 per cent. to wages, an addition made almost entirely at the expense of the wealthier class."

Nevertheless, it is asserted, alike by divines, labour leaders, and political statisticians that Labour has not got its 'fair ' share of the rapidly increasing wealth of the nation as a whole. That Labour has got much is not denied ; in face of the statistical demonstrations of such men as the late Sir Robert Giffen and Professor Bowley it cannot be denied. But the grievance appears to be that, while Labour has got much, other classes have got proportionately more. Assuming the facts as to the increase of the aggregate wealth of the nation to be as stated above, is there any validity in the argument, any real substance in the complaint? If the aggregate amount of fixed capital has increased more rapidly than the numbers of the manual workers, it cannot be regarded as unjust that capital in the aggregate should claim a larger share of the increment than Labour in the aggregate. Particularly if it be shown, as it has been, that while the return to capital has diminished the rate of wages has increased. As a matter of fact, it is wholly misleading to suggest that a disproportionate share of the increment has gone to the 'capitalist,' still less to the landlord.18 It has gone largely

1 Since 1900 there has been a slight decline.

17

Including charities, these 'services' are estimated to amount to 15 per cent. of the wages bill-a substantial bonus' to labour.

18 I forbear to give detailed statistical proof of many of the arguments employed above, as the reader can refer to two valuable and suggestive articles contributed by Mr. Mallock to this Review in April and June of the present

year.

in the remuneration of the class which, under modern conditions of trade, is of pre-eminent value to the community-the great organisers and directors, the captains of industry.

And of all the classes in the community the manual workers ought least to grudge to the organisers their appropriate reward. For on their skill and energy the profitable employment of labour depends. It is the root fallacy of Syndicalism, as it has been the blunder of many productive co-operative societies, to ignore or to minimise the significance of this factor in industrial success. It is, indeed, the avowed object of Syndicalism to eliminate the employer, and to substitute a committee of the workers' for individual management or directorial control. It may be admitted that there are some industries in which such a substitution would do less harm than in others; some trades which serve a regular and relatively restricted market may almost run themselves.' The history of productive co-operation tends to establish a similar conclusion. There can be no one who does not wish well to the many experiments in this direction. It is, however, notorious that success has been partial; very much more marked in some trades than in others. Nor is there any reason why the Syndicalists, if they are willing to pay a fair market price for going concerns, and able to raise the capital required, should not embark upon similar experiments. Given honesty of dealing there are none to hinder them, and many to encourage and applaud. But they cannot hope to succeed by an initial denial of the true functions either of 'capital' or of 'direction' in economic production, nor by a refusal to pay both for money and brains a fair price. On no other terms will either requisite be permanently available.

The very worst service which the friends of 'Labour' and the advocates of economic reconstruction can render is to ignore the facts which patient investigation reveals. In the social and economic fabric of to-day there are many weak places, admitted by Individualists no less than by Socialists and Syndicalists. The aggregate improvement in the position of the working classes during the last half-century has not been universally diffused; considerable sections have had little or no share in it. Great wealth is not always spent (though much more often than is currently believed) with a due sense of the responsibility attaching to it. Luxury is apt to be, if not more general, much more obtrusive and flaunting than in past days of greater restraint and less publicity. The contrasts between comfort and want are too frequent and too glaring.

But the remedy for these things lies not in passionate appeals to class prejudice; not in the dissemination of statistics which, if not actually inaccurate, are, in the absence of explanation,

wholly misleading; not in the undue exaltation of the economic functions of labour as compared with those of capital and direction; least of all in a fundamental reconstruction of society either on Socialist or Syndicalist lines. It lies primarily in the patient investigation of facts, and in the cultivation of sympathy, based not upon rhetoric but upon knowledge.

J. A. R. MARRIOTT.

THE CHURCH AND THE MARRIAGE LAW

ON the 20th of June in the present year the House of Lords gave judgment in a case which directly touches the relations between the Church of England and the State. The vicar of a parish in the diocese of Norwich had refused to admit to Communion a couple who had contracted a marriage, being already brother and sister-in-law. Both the law of the State and the law of the Church in reference to such unions are perfectly plain. By the one they are valid; by the other they are invalid. By the one those who enter into them are living together in lawful matrimony; by the other they are living together in a state which, according to the Canons of 1604, is no marriage at all. Unfortunately, the question did not come before the court in a way which made this patent antagonism clear. The vicar had pleaded a proviso in the Act legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister which, as he contended, expressly protected him from the proceedings taken against him. Sir Lewis Dibdin put aside this proviso as having no bearing on the case, and admonished Mr. Thompson to abstain in the future from denying Holy Communion either to the husband or the wife; Mr. Thompson then applied to the civil courts for a Writ of Prohibition, and in this way the case came on appeal before the House of Lords. There the prohibition was refused on the ground that Mr. Thompson was not protected by the proviso. Thus, as regards the refusal of Communion, the clergy are in the same position as they would have been in had there been no proviso in the Act. It is clear, I imagine, that if Mr. Thompson had been in a position to repeat the offence the admonition would have taken a severer form, and that continuous disobedience would have ended in deprivation. Any clergyman, therefore, who follows Mr. Thompson's example will be subject to the same penalty, unless he can show by some new argument that he is protected by something else than the proviso in the Act of 1907. I cannot see that this amounts to anything less than an assumption by the State of the right to determine the terms of admission to Holy Communion. Mr. Thompson has refused Communion to certain persons because they have con

tracted a marriage which, whatever it may be as a civil contract, is not in the eye of the Church anything more than an illicit connexion.' It is not disputed that a clergyman would have been bound to do this as the law of the Church stood before 1907. It has not been shown that the law of the Church on this subject has been altered in any particular in, or since, 1907. Yet, notwithstanding this, Mr. Thompson's appeal is dismissed, and he is, in effect, directed to admit to Communion two persons who have broken this law. Why? Because their marriage has been made lawful by Act of Parliament. If this is not an assumption by the State of a right to determine the terms of admission to Holy Communion, what is it? And if it be such an assumption, how is it that the Church has, to all appearance, offered no resistance to it?

Several answers have been given to this question. It has been argued, for example, that the State has done nothing which it had not a legal and moral right to do. It has interpreted a proviso in an Act of Parliament. What other body than the House of Lords is competent to this? Surely you would not maintain that it rests with the Church to affix a meaning to the statute law? I maintain nothing of the kind. The House of Lords might have given the very same judgment that they did give, and given it in a way which would have left the marriage law of the Church altogether untouched. They might have said: 'Mr. Thompson has pleaded that he is protected against the monition of the Dean of the Arches by a proviso in the Act legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister. We are of opinion that this proviso does not cover, and was not intended to cover, what he has done. We therefore remit the case to the Court of Arches to be dealt with according to the laws ecclesiastical.' If this had been the purport of the judgment, no Churchman would have had any possible ground of complaint. The State would merely have decided the meaning of certain words in an Act of Parliament. Whether the rules of the Court of Arches would have allowed Mr. Thompson to amend his plea, and to rest his defence on the canons instead of on the proviso, I do not know. But even if leave had been refused it would have been the act of what, in name at least, is a spiritual court, and there would have been no interference with Church law on the part of the State. As the judgment stands there is no reference to any marriage law of the Church different from that of the State. On the contrary, Lord Loreburn says in his judgment: It is inconceivable that any court of law should allow as a lawful cause [of refusing Communion] the cohabitation of two persons whose union is directly sanctioned by Act of Parliament.' And Lord Ashbourne: 'I am unable to see