mune as the unit with co-operative labour even on a small scale as the goal, this would correspond as nearly as circumstances allow to the stage at which Rousseau affirmed mankind should have arrested itself, the stage when men lived in little village societies, and before they made the fatal social contract which gave birth to civil society; the happy savage state before civilization or laws, refined arts or luxuries; and if this be the origin of the anarchists' ideas, it would partly explain their hostility to civilization, art, science, and their glorification of "holy ignorance." But, however this be, the germs of their aspirations and creed are to be found in Rousseau's earlier writings, and probably were thence gathered by Bakunin. But that Rousseau did not think a return to the past possible, that he did not wish for non-government, but a good government and reforms, we have just seen. The pity was that neither the reforms he desired, nor the best government as the means of accomplishing them, could be attained. without a revolution.

The Revolution came for which Rousseau and others had prepared men's minds. What was the Revolution? At first a rising against the privileges and unjust exemptions of the nobility and clergy, in the sequel a rising against property, largely held in their hands, and an attempt to bring in the reign of equality; in short, a Socialistic Revolution, in its essence, as M. Taine regards it, although the word. did not then exist. The course of the revolution turned entirely on the question of property. It was

a contest (in which the third estate and the people were on one side) for a new distribution of property and of political power as a means towards it. It has, indeed, been asserted that it was a Bourgeois revolution; that it was made by the Bourgeoisie, and that they were the sole gainers. This is partly true, partly erroneous, for the people gained likewise. They gained the land; at least two millions were added to the peasant proprietors that existed before the Revolution, and all were relieved from oppressive feudal burdens. It is, however, true that the rising middle class, envious of the political power as well as the exclusive privileges and social position of the upper classes, were the leaders of the assault on power and privilege, and that they finally overthrew them, while ever afterwards, even during the strong rule of Napoleon and the time of the restored Bourbons, they monopolized place, and to a great extent, from the fall of Napoleon, political power. Nevertheless the people, as stated, gained very considerably by the Revolution. They had been the poor and suffering class, and they gained the most from the material point of view. They not only gained the land, but they also gained the consciousness of their strength which, as shown by repeated instances, they have never lost since the great Revolution—a fact which makes the people a power in France beyond what they are in any other country. It is true that since the Revolution they have fallen into a new subjection in the great towns-the economic subjection to capital, -but the French working classes have very emphatically shown that they will not submit resignedly

to the power of a plutocracy, while their countrymen in the rural districts have shaken themselves free of the feudal aristocracy.

The Revolution was forced to fight. The "French principles" were dangerous, were infectious. It was the cause of the people and partly of the growing middle class over Europe against the privileged classes. The Titan war followed between the French nation in arms and the coalesced kings of Europe. When the excitement was all over, when the thunders of the cannon were hushed, it was found in fact that the terrible war had been for the most part in vain; that all the blood and treasure had been spent for little result from the reactionists' point of view; that, though men may be killed, ideas are impenetrable by bullets, and that men of the sword may as easily cleave the intrenchant air with their keen blades" as principles like those that underlay the Revolutionary movement; that the Democratic flood was, in fact, only temporarily checked, to acquire thereafter increased and irresistible volume and force,

CHAPTER III.

MODERN SOCIALISM: FROM ST. SIMON TO KARL

MARX

I.

THE ferment of ideas and the gorgeous hopes first aroused by the Revolution ushered in a fresh era of Social Utopias, as well as patent political constitutions. Babœuf, in France, advocated pure Communism in addition to liberty and perfect equality, though without showing how liberty is reconcilable with Communism. In England also, Godwin, in his "Political Justice," impressed with the evils of the existing order which he powerfully denounced, declared for Communism as involving the lesser evils. He makes somewhat light of the tremendous difficulties in the way, answers them one by one more from the lofty point of view of the philosopher than of the man. He is, however, logical and thoroughgoing, since with Plato, or going beyond him, he does not shrink from, nor stop short of, a community of women and children as well as of property. From this work Shelley derived the like social and political faith, as shown in the "Revolt of Islam" and others of his writings. Other English poets, including Coleridge and Southey, were smitten with the ideal

beauties of Communism, which they proposed to realize in the New World, away from European prejudices and obstacles, in fact in the land the most suitable, in America, where so many new social experiments have since been tried.

These and different other Utopian schemes remained ideas; they became forgotten as time moved on, as the Revolution seemed to have failed, as men saw their impracticability. It was not until the great war was over, and the Industrial Revolution, which had been going on before and during the political and social revolution, and during the war, had nearly accomplished itself, that something resembling a possible scheme of social reorganization was submitted by St. Simon, a French noble, who accordingly is usually regarded as the founder of modern Socialism, though even he can hardly be said to have reached the true socialist position, or the distinctive doctrines of socialism until within a few years of his death.

Undoubtedly he was a man of genius and insighta bold and original social thinker and reformer, some of whose ideas have had permanent results, and these, as well as the successive phases of thought which led up more and more clearly to his final views, are well worth considering. According to St. Simon, modern society had long been disorganized, and it was urgently necessary that it should be organized afresh and on wholly new principles. It should be organized with a view to the needs of industry, which will be its future main business, as it had been organized in the past with a view to the needs of war as the That past was gone. That past was gone. The day of the

normal state.