THE COMING SLAVERY. 741 



mediaeval Europe and still more in Japan nay, has thus so led among 

 our neighbors within our own times. The recent confessions of M. 

 de Maupas have shown how readily a constitutional head, elected and 

 trusted by the whole people, may, with the aid of a few unscrupulous 

 confederates, paralyze the representative body and make himself auto- 

 crat. That those who rose to power in a socialistic organization would 

 not scruple to carry out their aims at all costs, we have good reason 

 for concluding. When we find that shareholders, who, sometimes gain- 

 ing, but often losing, have made that railway-system by which na- 

 tional prosperity has been so greatly increased, are spoken of by the 

 council of the Democratic Federation as having " laid hands " on the 

 means of communication, we may infer that those who directed a 

 socialistic administration might interpret with extreme perversity the 

 claims of individuals and classes under their control. And when, fur- 

 ther, we find members of this same council urging that the state 

 should take possession of the railways, " with or without compensa- 

 tion," we may suspect that the heads of the ideal society desired, 

 would be but little deterred by considerations of equity from pursuing 

 whatever policy they thought needful a policy which would always 

 be one identified with their own supremacy. It would need but a war 

 with an adjacent society, or some internal discontent demanding for- 

 cible suppression, to at once transform a socialistic administration into 

 a grinding tyranny like that of ancient Peru ; under which the mass 

 of the people, controlled by grades of officials, and leading lives that 

 were inspected out-of-doors and in-doors, labored for the support of 

 the organization which regulated them, and were left with but a bare 

 subsistence for themselves. And then would be completely revived, 

 under a different form, that regime of status that system of compul- 

 sory co-operation, the decaying tradition of which is represented by 

 the old Toryism, and toward which the new Toryism is carrying us 

 back. 



" But we shall be on our guard against all that we shall take pre- 

 cautions to ward off such disasters," will doubtless say the enthusiasts. 

 Be they " practical " politicians with their new regulative measures, or 

 communists with their schemes for reorganizing labor, the answer is 

 ever the same : " It is true that plans of kindred nature have, from 

 unforeseen causes and adverse accidents, or the misdeeds of those con- 

 cerned, been brought to failure ; but this time we shall profit by past 

 experiences and succeed." There seems no getting people to accept 

 the truth, which nevertheless is conspicuous enough, that the welfare 

 of a society and the justice of its arrangements are at bottom depend- 

 ent on the characters of its members ; and that improvement in nei- 

 ther can take place without that improvement in character which re- 

 sults from carrying on peaceful industry under the restraints imposed 

 by an orderly social life. The belief, not only of the socialists but 

 also of those so-called Liberals who are diligently preparing the way 



