440 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



theory of property, accepts what he terms "the 

 natural-economical theory," according to which 

 every human being, as he is entitled to live, is 

 entitled necessarily to such an amount of prop- 

 erty as will enable him to support life. He at. 

 tempts to prove the truth of this by a reductio ad 

 absurdum: "If a man cannot claim a share in 

 the productive stock to live by his labor on it, he 

 has no right at all. It is no violation of justice 

 to allow him to die of hunger." He continues : 

 "Need we say that this solution, which seems to 

 be that of the official school of jurists and econ- 

 omists, is contrary alike to the innate sentiment 

 of justice, to natural right, to the primitive legis- 

 lation of all nations, and even to the principles 

 of those who adopt it? " (page 351). 



M. de Laveleye is here confusing the duties 

 of humanity with the theory of property. So far 

 as the bare question of rights of property goes, 

 a man's right to property is bounded by his earn- 

 ings or those of others for him. M. de Laveleye, 

 indeed, admits the principle when he says, in the 

 preface to the original edition of his work, 

 " The lofty maxim of justice, ' To every one ac- 

 cording to his work,' must be realized, so that 

 property may actually be the result of labor, and 

 that the well-being of each may be proportional 

 to the cooperation which he gives to produc- 

 tion." If property be due to every one accord- 

 ing to his work, the man who does no work 

 might as justly be left to die of hunger, as M. de 

 Laveleye thinks he might be according to the 

 theory which holds that property must actually 

 be the result of labor, but that the labor is equally 

 labor whether done by the hands of the possessor 

 of the property or of a former generation. M. 

 de Laveleye fancies Christianity favors ownership 

 in common, which he denominates the primitive 

 theory of property, and not what he calls " qui- 

 ritary," that is, private ownership. " Christiani- 

 ty," he says, " is an equalizing religion. The 

 gospel is the good tidings brought to the poor, 

 and Christ is not the friend of the rich. His 

 doctrine verges on communism, and his imme- 

 diate disciples and the religious orders who 

 sought to follow his teaching strictly lived in 

 community. If Christianity were taught and un- 

 derstood conformably to the spirit of its founder, 

 the existing social organization could not last a 

 day." This is true in the same sense in which 

 it might be said that, if Christianity were taught ! 

 and understood conformably to the spirit of its 

 founder, able-bodied paupers would not continue 

 for a day to consent to eat the bread of idleness. 

 It is the present social morality, not the social 



organization, which must necessarily give way. 

 Christianity teaches those who have that it is 

 their duty to give to those who have not ; it does 

 not teach those who have not that it is their 

 right to have. 



The thoughts of students of social science 

 used formerly to be directed to the consideration 

 how best to secure the rights of property. At 

 present they seem to be employed chiefly in de- 

 vising ingenious arrangements for taking from 

 the rich and giving to the poor. Whatever M. 

 de Laveleye may think, his suggestions for rees- 

 tablishing in some form the communal system 

 have a dangerous tendency to weaken the faith 

 in the one honest axiom about property, that 

 people shall be protected by society in the pos- 

 sessions, whether land or goods, which they or 

 their fathers have earned. He appears to enter- 

 tain a certain contempt for the professors of po- 

 litical economy who adopt the vocation of " Ka- 

 theder-Socialisten," and lay down dogmas on the 

 proper distribution of wealth quite apart from 

 the facts of existing human society. But this 

 volume breathes throughout much of the spirit 

 of the "Katheder" — that is, the academic and 

 professorial — Socialist, Any such manifesta- 

 tions are the more to be deprecated that the 

 peril M. de Laveleye foresees from proletariate 

 envy of the riches other classes enjoy is very real 

 and formidable. How real and imminent Herr 

 Bamberger shows in two interesting articles he 

 has published in the February and March num- 

 bers of the Deutsche Rundschau, Herr Bam- 

 berger is a member of the German Reichstag, 

 and has attempted at various times to concentrate 

 parliamentary attention on the designs of the So- 

 cialist party. In the papers before us he shows 

 what dimensions the movement has already as- 

 sumed. Englishmen would hardly have compre- 

 hended till the events of last May and June his 

 startling declaration that in no country is the war 

 of classes so openly declared as it is in Germany. 

 The world has now conclusive evidence of the 

 alarming fact ; and even German Liberals recog- 

 nize the necessity of stringent measures of re- 

 pression against the Socialists. Till lately the 

 German public was as little awake to the peril be- 

 fore it as the American public was aware of the 

 power of trades-unions when the engine-drivers' 

 union last year lit a spark which at once envel- 

 oped five States of the Union almost literally in 

 flames. . Herr Bamberger quotes from an Ameri- 

 can journal of last year, which wrote : " A month 

 ago millions of Americans did not know what a 

 trades-union was. Now wc know." Herr Bam- 



