Pioneer Society became the pioneer store upon which a thousand others have been modelled. The simple theory of modern Co-operation is that the purchaser should share the profits made by a distributing store. The total profits arising after payment of all trade and reserve fund expenses, are reduced by one-half per cent., set apart for education of the members, and the residue is divided among all the buyers of the store, in proportion to their purchases. In a productive society, after the payment of all expenses, of wages, capital, material, rent, and reserved fund which the special risks of trade may require, the total profits, after the provision is made for educational purposes, are divided in the proportion agreed upon between labour and capital. After capital is rewarded according to its risks, the main object is to secure to labour such substantial share of the gains as shall be sufficient to enlist the highest skill of the workman and secure permanent interest in the enterprise. It appears likely that it will take as long to educate workmen into intelligent participation in this scheme of equity as it took to educate purchasers to put trust in stores and give their custom to them. In some cases employers have made advances in the same path, and have considerately formed industrial partnerships, in which they have accorded to their workmen such share of profit as could be shown to arise from their putting their skill and goodwill into their work, which in any business will improve, and in many greatly increase the returns. Some employers who have done this have drawn back, displaying as little confidence or interest in the intrinsic merit and equity of the arrangement as men have done in other cases; or they have attached degrading conditions to their overtures, which men of independence resented. In other cases employers have made generous sacrifices, and have paid profits which have not been created by the men, in order to encourage confidence and perseverance in a plan which must yield advantages to each when heartily carried out on both sides. Not unfrequently the men who form co-operative manufacturing societies prove themselves wanting in patience and generosity towards their comrades. They are unwilling to wait while their fellow-workmen come up to them in sense, energy, and intelligent acceptance of the principle of equity. The sharper sort, perceiving that a successful trade may speedily produce large profits, prefer commencing or converting the affair into a joint-stock one, and keeping the gains in their own hands, and taking their chance of hiring labour like other employers. Thus, instead of the mastership of two or three, they introduce the system of a hundred masters. They may not be said to be traitors to Cooperation, since they cannot be accused of betraying what has not existed. They simply desert it, and instead of promoting it, multiply organizations for the individual rather than the common profit, and enlarge the field of strikes, and prepare ground for contests between capital and labour more furious and savage than any which have hitherto occurred. Greater honour is therefore due to those employers, manufacturing and agricultural, who generously set the example of affording facilities for those who engage in their service, for taking in some degree the position of partners, which endows labour with dignity and more or less with a share of its profits. The present Speaker of the House of Commons did this when he announced to those who worked upon his estate, that he would afford them facilities for becoming part proprietors of it. This gave them a position of pride and self-respect, which was valuable beyond calculation. The social consequences of such an admission, rightly used, would produce more advantages than many agitations such as are within the means of labourers to conduct. To have it admitted by a gentleman so eminent and influential as the representative of the House of Commons, that labourers had a social right to share in the profits of the estate which they contributed to cultivate, was an admission of more service to the working people than many Acts of Parliament passed in their name and professedly for their benefit. For an humble villager to be able to say that he was a shareholder in the Glynde estate, however small might be the portion which his prudence and frugality enabled him to acquire-however small might be the profits thus accruing to him-puts him into an entirely changed position. His forefathers were slaves, then serfs, then free labourers. He becomes in some sort a landowner. He henceforth stands upon what Sir Alexander Cockburn would call a "colourable" equality with the proprietor himself. If he had any cultivated spirit of independence in him, such labourer would have more satisfaction in the idea than many a tenant farmer is able to find in the position which he holds. It must follow in a few years that the wages of such a man must increase, his political inconsideration must be recognized, and by prudence, temper, and good judgment the relation between this body of small proprietors and the chief owner must have been the most pleasant and honourable in England. That these labourers were wanting in the disposition or were ill-advised by those to whom they would naturally look for counsel, and neglected to act on the unusual offer made by the Right Honourable Mr. Brand, detracts in no way from the value of it. Men may be taken to the steps of Paradise and decline to ascend, yet he is not the less meritorious who gives the opportunity. A man may not have the sense to ascend; he may not understand his opportunity; he may even distrust it through his own ignorance; he may have the humility which makes him doubt his own fitness to advance; he may have. the diffidence which makes him distrust his own power of going forward; he may even prefer to remain where he is, content that he may advance on another occasion. But he is no longer the same man; he stands higher in his own esteem. He has had the chance of better things, and the old feeling of discontent and sense of exclusion and bitterness at his previous state are for ever killed within him; and an inspiration of manliness, and equality, and undefined satisfaction takes the place of his former consciousness. A man may have a great opportunity and not embrace it. For some purpose, or preference, or infatuation of his own, he may go past it; he may regret it, but he is a happier man by far ever after, than he who never had the chance of bettering himself. So every manufacturer and every landowner, who makes overtures of industrial partnership to his men, raises the character of mastership and proprietorship. Sooner or later men will accept the offers, and be grateful for them, and turn them to fortunate account. In the meantime the whole temper of industry is being changed by these overtures; the mighty doors of conciliation and equality are being opened through which, one day, all the workmen of England will pass. In the meantime, the mere dream of this invests the Order of Industry with new interest and hope. This will seem sentimental only to those who know human nature second-hand. We all live in ideals. Those who deny the ideal of others live in one of their own, lower or higher, though they may not know it. The true artist, solitary and needy though he may be, paints for the truth; the thinker thinks for it; the martyr dies for a principle the glory of which only his eye sees. Progress is the mark of humanity, the seal of its destination; and the aspiration of the lowest is the ideal which carries him forward, and when it fails manhood falls. back and perishes. Whoever or whatever presents men with a new opportunity of advancement, brings it near to them, and keeps it near to them until they understand it, inspires progress. This is what Co-operation has done. It has filled the air with new ideas of progress by concert. When these Utopian ideas were first revived in industrial circles, men thought they were the mere flashes of lightning which play upon the fringe of a coming tempest. They may be rather compared to the rainbow arch, which denotes a permanent truce between the warring elements, a sign that the storm is passing away. GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. VOL. XXVIJI. 2 I ON THE REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT. "Let us pursue the inquiry, not in relation to all ideas, lest the multitude of them should confuse us, but let us select a few of those which are reckoned to be the principal ones"-PLATO, Sophist. p. 254. HA III. AVING spoken thus far generally of the principles which should guide the translation and revision of the New Testament, and having indicated some kinds of alteration that may be dispensed with in order to preserve the tone and character of our version, it remains to point out more exactly the kind of changes which are to be considered important, and to which the attention of the reviser should in the first instance be directed. But before going so far into detail, it is perhaps necessary to make a few observations on the Greek text and on the history of our English version. THE TEXT. It is obvious that the interpretation of any book of which the autograph is not accessible, and especially of an ancient writing, involves the prior question of the settlement of the text. The general nature of this question in regard to the New Testament is at last coming to be better understood in this country. From the very fact that the intense and continuous labour which it demands is confined to a few persons, in whom the critical may be assumed to be generally stronger than the ecclesiastical interest, this subject has been less liable than that of interpretation to the intrusion of "idols of the temple." Father Montfaucon maintaining the cause of Dr. Bentley in the meeting of the superiors of the monastery of St. Germain,* is no isolated example of the common spirit which has bound together those engaged in this work, even when belonging to different communions or schools of thought. And there has been a growing disposition on the part of the educated public to accept their decisions, which have thus an authority like that of the acknowledged results of science. Most persons nowadays would be ashamed of the panic which seized the religious world at the beginning of the eighteenth century, on being told that Dr. Mill had discovered 30,000 various readings in Greek MSS. of the New Testament. Their ready answer to such an objection would be that the variations were unimportant. Yet this comfortable assurance has not come spontaneously. Those who enjoy it owe more than they are aware to many a half-forgotten combatant who in his day was compelled to undergo the imputation of Unitarianism. There is probably now hardly any clergyman of average scholarship who believes in the genuineness of the text of the three witnesses (1 John v. 7). Yet it should not be forgotten that, for two centuries and more, no clergyman could have questioned the authority of this verse, without incurring the danger of being reputed a Socinian. This and some other facts about the Bible have passed out of the stagein which it was said of them, "They are not true," into the other stage, in which the orthodox interpreter declares that "Everybody knew them." It is not quite well that these sudden conversions or revolutions of opinion should be passed over, like the changes in some men's political views, without the slightest reference being made to them afterwards. "Let bygones be bygones is not applicable to scientific questions. There is an amende honorable due to those who originally held the right opinion, and who are now conveniently ignored. The Unitarian has been habitually attacked for falsifying the Scripture, and ridiculed for want of scholarship. But it must at least be acknowledged that the fault has not been all on one side; and theologians may learn from this the lesson of humility, and be less confident that the reading or interpretation which is maintained by them to-day will be maintained two centuries hence. It should be remembered that the giving up of these verses involves giving up the names of Horsley, Waterland, Bull, and others, who fought the Unitarians, though we are far from wishing to fix upon them the stigma with which they succeeded in branding, in the opinion of Churchmen, *Monk's Life of Bentley, p. 432: "Here Father Montfaucon, the most distinguished of the body, maintained the cause of Dr. Bentley with an ardour which shows that the spirit of chivalry may find its way into the regions of scholastic literature. He contended that the request of so great a scholar, from whom they had received obligations, ought by all means to be complied with, even though their own undertaking should thereby be prejudiced; and that he would rather send the treasures themselves to Cambridge for Bentley's use, than, by refusing the indulgence requested, bring a disgrace upon the Benedictine name." 1 |