At this stage Tawney gives no examples, but consider the good of "a feeling of security". If a neighbourhood feels safe, then someone moving in to that neighbourhood may benefit from an increased sense of security without anyone else suffering a cost of any sort. There is only gain.This dual concern is a constant theme in egalitarian thought, certainly up to Bernard Williams's classic paper The Idea of Equality (1962). Tawney is describing a society which, he obviously thinks, is manifestly unequal in many ways.

What, in detail, is the remedy for this? Perhaps Tawney's real view is that while equality of wealth is very important, it is not the most important thing. I take Tawney to mean that we can put goods into at least two classes. In one class are those where, if one person is to have more, than at least one other must have less.In the other category of goods are those where at least some can have more without anyone ending up with less. Tawney's general theme was that Britain had pretty much burnt itself out as a major industrial force, by this time, and that hope for the future depended not so much on the improvements of techniques of production, as on a reconsideration of why exactly we are producing things in the first place. IN 1929, RH Tawney gave the fourth Halley Stewart Lectures, which were subsequently published in 1931 under the title Equality.

Now he must find the words to say it and the mountain-top to shout it from.. He has always been more liberal than his party on the gay age of consent. A true meritocrat, he is unsullied by the poisonous snobbery that has long been around in the Tory Party.Hague does have a message worth hearing. He has assumed an admirably libertarian stance on social issues and has no truck with the murmured racialism that has for long been allowed to pass without censure in his party. Third, the embarrassing and unfocused expeditions into nationalist territory, and the blather about Britishness, must be checked. A wise leader knows when to turn back.Mr Hague is an eloquent defender of the free market, a subject on which the Government is ambiguous. His concerns about democratic accountability, at Westminster and in Europe, are justified.