“That men no longer need special political privileges to protect them against women; and that the sexes should henceforth enjoy equal political rights.
“That the established Government has no more right to call itself the State than the smoke of London has to call itself the weather. “That we had rather face a civil war than such another century of suffering as the present one has been.”
Tract No. 3, addressed “To Provident Landlords and Capitalists,” urged the proprietary classes to support “all undertakings having for their object the parcelling out of waste or inferior lands among the labouring class, and the attachment to the soil of a numerous body of peasant proprietors.” Among the probable results of such a reform was mentioned (section 5): “The peasant proprietor, having a stock in the country, will, unlike the landless labourer of to-day, have a common interest with the landlord in resisting revolutionary proposals.”
[48] Compare Fabian Tract No. 41.
[49] The Transition to Social Democracy, an address delivered on September 7th, 1888, to the Economic Section of the British Association at Bath. Printed in Fabian Essays, but first published in Our Corner, November, 1888, edited by Annie Besant.
[50] Tract No. 41, The Fabian Society: Its Early History, by G. Bernard Shaw.
[51] The main facts of the history of the Fabian Society as here recorded are derived chiefly from Fabian Tract, No. 41, The Fabian Society: Its Early History, by Mr. Shaw, and from conversations with Mr. Shaw. Compare, also, The Fabian Society, by William Clarke; Preface to Fabian Essays. Ball Publishing Co., Boston, 1908.
[52] For an interesting account of the early movements of Socialistic consciousness in England, compare An Artist's Reminiscences, by the artist, Walter Crane; Chapter “Art and Socialism,” pp. 249-338. Methuen and Co., 1907.
[53] Shaw's mother was never able to persuade herself, so strong were her aristocratic instincts, that in becoming a Socialist, George had not allied himself with a band of ragamuffins. One day, while walking down Regent Street with her son, she inquired who was the handsome gentleman on the opposite side. On being told that it was Cunninghame Graham, the distinguished Socialist, she protested: “No, no, George, that's impossible. Why, that man's a gentleman!”
[54] Compare To-Day, edited by Hubert Bland, for the year 1886.