The third annual Congress of the British Constitution Association, which
was held at Cambridge last week, proved of very great interest. Mr. Harold Co; M.P., gave an address on "Socialism and Individualism," which we trust will be printed verbatim by the Association. The following passage from Mr. Cox's speech is well worth quotation :—
" The Socialist wished the State to absorb all property. At present he limited his demands to that form of property which he described as the means of production and distribution, but in practice no distinction was possible. In practice he would find himself in the same dilemma as the Tariff Reformer who tried to distinguish between raw material and manufactured articles. It was of course conceivable that human beings would continue to exist under a system in which all property was owned by the State and individuals were maintained in State barracks ; it would, however, be a very different kind of human being from those of whom the world had as yet had any experience. No such system could continue unless the State also undertook the regulation of the reproduction of the human race, and hitherto human beings had refused this vital question to external control. Man wished to choose his own wife, and woman wished to choose her own husband, and they both wished if they were normal human beings to have the control over their own children, and to have their own homes in which to bring them up, and these were the reasons why in the long run Socialism must fail."
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