2o6	ENGLISHSAGA
be achieved, the educated leaders of society must themselves be
brought to see the necessity of revolution. In a law-abiding
countrv like England mob oratory and emotional appeals to
mass violence could never succeed. The capitalist state was not
to be stormed but gradually occupied by a process of infiltration.
This was the policy of * permeation." It aimed at permeating
the political organisations and institutions of the country with
Socialist ideas without any open avowal of socialism. The
Fabians were encouraged to seek membership of every society--
Liberal, Tory or Labour, Christian or atheist—that would admit
them and there secure by the arts of persuasion and lobbying the
adoption of socialist measures. Especially were they to seek to
permeate the Opposition, since by its very nature parliamentary
Opposition is inclined to be revolutionary and always seeking to
overturn the government.
The Fabians pinned their faith to an extension of legislative
action. They announced that "the era of administration had
come." The state was to be socialised through its own machinery.
Instead of concerning themselves with such questions as free
trade, retrenchment, Church disestablishment and the abolition
of the House of Lords, the Fabians were to concentrate on free
education, municipal trading, the provision of state-aided houses
and small holdings and the graduated taxation of incomes and
estates. They were not to dictate but to throw out suggestions.
Nothing could have been better adapted to the spirit of the
time or the character of England
Fabianism went with the tide* of contemporary thought.
The Benthamites had long emphasised the sanatory qualities of
reforming legislation supported by an incorruptible and cen-
tralised bureaucracy and inspectorate. As a result of their teach-
ing, Liberals had purged the civil service of corruption in the
name of utility and reason. An efficient administration, subject
to a Parliament increasingly taught to regard itself as legislative
rather than a debating assembly, was now to be applied for a
purpose which its utilitarian sponsors would have viewed with
horror—"the practical extension of the activity of the state."^1
The weapon the utilitarians had forged was to destroy
economic utilitarianism.
For only the state's intervention could now redress the state's
neglect. The only remedy for the evil of laissez-faire seemed to
^1A. 7. Dicq, Law and Ofimoto in England, 509.