[1244] Report on Fabian Policy, p. 7.
[1245] Fabian Essays, pp. 47-49.
[1246] Ibid., p. 31.
[1247] Sidney Webb, The Difficulties of Individualism, in Problems of Modern Industry, p. 231. Also in the Fabian Essays, p. 35, he declares: “Socialists as well as individualists realise that important organic changes can only be (1) democratic …; (2) gradual …; (3) not regarded as immoral by the mass of the people; and (4) in this country, at any rate, constitutional and peaceful.”
[1248] B. Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), The Co-operative Movement, p. 16.
[1249] Etymologically “solidarity” is a corruption of solidum, which was employed by the Roman jurists to signify the obligation incurred by debtors who were each held responsible for the whole amount of a debt. One would naturally expect the French derivative to be solidité, which was the term used by the jurists under the old régime, especially by Pothier. Solidarité was substituted for it by the editors of the Civil Code.
[1250] We should never come to an end if we began to quote passages in which the merits of solidarity are set forth. We must content ourselves with the following, chosen at random:
M. Millerand, at the time Minister of Commerce, in a speech delivered at the opening of the Exposition Universelle in 1900, said: “Science teaches men the true secret of material greatness and of social morality; and all its teaching, in a word, points to solidarity.”
M. Deherme, the founder of the People’s University movement, says: “The folly of solidarity should be the source of our inspiration, just as the martyrs of old were inspired by the folly of the Cross. The thing that wants doing is to organise democracy.” (La Co-operation des Idées, June 16, 1900.)
[1251] “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Romans xii, 4 and 5.)