Radicalism of the time, and directed towards alterations in the mere machinery of government—annual Parliaments, payment of Members, abolition of the House of Lords, and the like. The only distinctively "Socialist" article in its creed was a claim, not further defined, for the nationalization of land.
But as time went on the Federation became, partly by the secession of members who belonged to the older school of Radicalism, partly by a new enthusiasm among the younger men, more and more Socialist in general tendency and sympathy: and the practical changes which it advocated all went in the direction of setting up a State Socialism of a somewhat drastic kind. The "Democrat without ulterior views" of the previous generation was becoming a Social Democrat; was asking what was the use of democratic institutions, and whether they were an end or only a means. Once this question was fairly raised, the whole existing system of society began to rock and waver. To the new analysis, the status of a middle class was as artificial, and therefore as capable of removal, as all the privileges and anomalies which had been swept away by that middle class itself, when once it took the pains to organize itself and set hand to the work. People were even beginning to ask themselves, with a sudden shock of disenchantment, what reason there was for the existence of a middle class at all.
"Numbers of young men," such was the account given some seven years later by one of the most thoughtful leaders of the movement, which had then parted with some of its unreasoning enthusiasm and lost the dazzle of its earlier hope, "pupils of Mill, Spencer, Comte, and Darwin, roused by Mr. Henry George's 'Progress and Poverty,' left aside evolution and free thought; took to insurrectionary economics;
