Third Period : 1817–1848.

§1. Rigidly, our third period dates from the publication of Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817. We may, however, notice in passing a group of thinkers who fall partly within this, and partly within the preceding, period. These are the Communists and Socialists of the early nineteenth century, the most prominent of whom were St. Simon, Fourier and Robert Owen. From the spectacle of the French Revolution, which had terrified the milder sort of reformers, these men derived a belief in the possibility of large reconstructions of human society. It is unnecessary here to consider in detail either St. Simon’s project of State Socialism or the schemes of Fourier and Owen for voluntary and local associations of producers. ¹ It is interesting, however, to notice that St. Simon recognised existing laws of inheritance as a force strongly consolidating the present order. But, in his scheme for reorganising production by “the union of all instruments of labour in a social fund, which shall be exploited by association,” ² the abolition of inheritance is only a trivial and necessary part of a larger whole. It was left for Mill to suggest that the objects of Socialists might be largely attained by changes in the law of inheritance.