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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



sufficieut to illustrate the profound difference be- 

 tween the two systems ? " It would be far less 

 unfair and misleading to contrast the boys who 

 run begging out of comfortable cottages in Berne 

 with the children of an English village school, 

 who would as soon think of mendicancy as of 

 not pulling off their caps to the squire. But, 

 according to M. de Laveleye's standard of reason- 

 ing, the habit of mendicity, we suppose, should 

 be considered condemnatory of the Swiss com- 

 munal system. Even to regret, with M. de La- 

 veleye, the ruin impending over the system of 

 village and family communities, considering that 

 it is allowed to be a natural and necessary ten- 

 dency of modern society, might seem to be 

 scarcely the province of the " economist," how- 

 ever appropriate in a moralist and seer like Mr. 

 Ruskin. But M. de Laveleye lets symptoms es- 

 cape him at times of a hope that political econ- 

 omy will discover " an organization which may 

 confer property on all citizens able to labor." 

 Such a discovery, he warns us, " in presence of 

 the democratic movement, by which we are im- 

 pelled, and of the equalizing tendencies which 

 agitate the laboring-classes," is the one means 

 of averting disaster and saving liberty. Besides 

 warnings, however, he has comfort for us. We 

 are, it seems, spite of all appearances to the con- 

 trary, and which have been very amply enlarged 

 on by M. de Laveleye himself, actually retro- 

 grading to the primeval happiness of which the 

 Church, and feudalism, and the French Revolu- 

 tion, have despoiled Europe, though they have 

 not deprived Java : 



" At present the organization to which the ten- 

 dencies and aspirations of European societies are 

 directed is manifestly that of the American town- 

 ship and the Swiss canton, which is no other than 

 that of Ditmarsch or the valley of Andorre — that 

 is to say, that which free populations spontaneous- 

 ly establish at the commencement of civilization, 

 and which may thus be called natural. A federa- 

 tion of autonomic and land-owning communes 

 should compose the state ; and the federation of 

 states ought eventually to form the organization of 

 universal human society " (page 241). 



We are charmed at the versatility with which 

 an economist who has just been showing, with 

 admirable learning, that the whole world has 

 passed through the stage of communal property, 

 and that the whole world has repudiated it, or is 

 repudiating it, persuades himself that the most 

 advanced portion of the world is bent on reviv- 

 ing what it long ago rejected. But we look in 

 vain to M. de Laveleye for indications of the ten- 



dencies and aspirations of European societies 

 toward the institutions of Ditmarsch and Andorre. 

 The Speaker of the House of Commons has of- 

 fered to admit his laborers to a sort of coopera- 

 tion with their landlord, but they have displayed 

 a very lukewarm interest in the plan. Some 

 friends of the agricultural journeyman have 

 bought two or three hundred acres in Lincoln- 

 shire, on which landlord, farmer, and laborer, are 

 to be one and the same ; but the projectors have 

 shown becoming modesty in not vaunting their 

 achievements before harvest, and a farm in Lin- 

 colnshire is, at the best, scarcely a proof of "the 

 tendencies and aspirations of European societies." 

 Lastly, there is Mr. Ruskin's Arcadia on some as 

 yet undiscovered and railless English coast. But 

 M. de Laveleye cannot be referring to that, for 

 he knows no more of its location than men who 

 are no economists. Of regeneration death is a 

 condition ; and there is this to be said for M. de 

 Laveleye's view of the future, that the communal 

 systems which are, he believes, destined to re- 

 vival, are, according to his own researches, either 

 dead or fast dying — all but his own peculiar 

 treasure-trove of the Swiss allmends. The ashes 

 of the old phoenix are in situ ; but as yet there 

 is no sign of the new phoenix. We have no 

 wish for the extinction of the relics of the com- 

 munal phase of ownership. A level uniformity 

 of tenure is not to be desired. The miseries con- 

 sequent upon changes from one social phase to 

 another are so great and enduring that we would 

 not precipitate the fall even of a system so lethar- 

 gic as that of the Russian mir. But the com- 

 munal system cannot live beside the system of 

 individual ownership; and it is a mere paradox 

 to suppose that the whole body of private laud- 

 owners, or, for that matter, of private laborers, 

 will abdicate their independence and form them- 

 selves into a federation of autonomic and land- 

 owning communes. The only safe principle of 

 reasoning is to argue from what has been to what 

 is likely to be; when we find society gravitating 

 everywhere toward the substitution of private for 

 common ownership, we are forced to the conclu- 

 sion that, if any system of property can be called 

 natural, it is that which all mankind, after trying 

 other sorts, end by preferring. M. de Laveleye, 

 on the contrary, holds that " the system which 

 populations establish at the commencement of 

 civilization may be called natural." Mr. Cliffe 

 Leslie, who has supplied an interesting introduc- 

 tion to the volume, endeavors to apologize for M. 

 de Laveleye's phraseology which would occasion- 

 ally suggest that he supposed a respect for nat- 



