Once eliminate the fear of starvation, once eliminate or bound the hope of riches, and we shall see plenty of skulking and malingering.

Society will then be something not wholly unlike a cotton plantation in the old days; with cheerful, careless, demoralised slaves, with elected overseers, and, instead of the planter, a chaotic popular assembly.

If the blood be purposeful and the soil strong, such a plantation may succeed, and be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries and long hours of leisure.

But even then I think the whip will be in the overseer's hands, and not in vain.

For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten.