450 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of Berlin bureaucracy is, that German Liberals 

 shall themselves point the way out of the maze in 

 which German social life has let itself be entan- 

 gled. All parties have coquetted by turns with 

 Socialism for the gratification of their mutual po- 

 litical rancor. It is for German Liberals to set 

 the example of refusing political alliance with 

 representatives of a federation which aims openly 

 at the violent revolutionizing of the entire exist- 

 ing social order. But they must do more ; they 

 must refuse all sanction to economical theories 

 which throw doubt on a man's right to manage 

 freely his own property so that he do not inter- 

 fere with his neighbor's right to equal freedom. 

 Germans, who would fiercely resent the slightest 

 interference with their own personal comfort, play 

 complacently with the wildest speculations on the 

 rights of capital in the abstract. Labor and cap- 

 ital must be left to settle their own terms in the 

 open market. That is a matter in which the state 

 can mar, but cannot mend. 



German Ultramontanes and German Conser- 

 vatives are hoping to turn the crimes of Htidel 

 and Nobiling to account at the next elections. 

 Whatever may be the success, which we doubt, 

 of the former party, German Liberals are likely to 

 experience the results of popular reaction. They 

 should only be the more resolute in rejecting help 

 from any side which professes tenets opposed to 

 those of genuine liberality. If Prince Bismarck 

 can produce a scheme which will prevent open 

 and insolent combinations against the rights of 

 property, yet not strike at freedom on the pre- 

 text of repressing Socialist conspiracies, the Lib- 

 eral members of the Reichsrath must beware of 

 repulsing it on account simply of the suspected 

 source from which it flows. No fault can be 

 found with their pledge and its qualification in 

 their electoral manifesto of last June. They de- 

 clare their intention " to support firmly in the 

 new Parliament the Imperial Governmert in de- 

 feuding the principles of social order, and to grant 

 unhesitatingly the requisite full powers to the 

 Administration on all occasions when the simple 

 application of the existing laws would be inade- 

 quate to the exigencies of the case." Whatever 

 proposals, they promise, "aim at this end, if they 

 do not endanger the permanent guarantees of our 

 laboriously acquired civil liberty, will meet with 

 the support of the National Liberal party." They 

 proceed to remind the electors that "the indis- 

 pensable and lasting rights of the nation must 

 not be lost ; a cure for the Socialist disease must 

 not be expected from legislation alone, but de- 



pends on the free and active cooperation of all 

 classes of the people." That cooperation, how- 

 ever, neither German Ultramontanes, nor Prince 

 Bismarck, nor German Liberals, have hitherto af- 

 forded. Never has a wide and deadly conspiracy 

 against human freedom been met with more self- 

 satisfied carelessness than by the whole body of 

 German politicians. German Liberals, above all, 

 may be assured that, unless they bend nil their 

 energies to the combining of free and educated 

 intelligence against Socialist corruption, reaction- 

 ary legislation is now a matter of course. The 

 real battle with German Socialism has to be 

 fought in the arena of German thought. It be- 

 hooves German Liberals to pluck their enemies' 

 keenest weapon out of their hands by demon- 

 strating the irreconcilableness of liberty with So- 

 cialism and " Militarism " alike. 



The insidious principle underlies the whole 

 Socialist movement, that, as a Hungarian dele- 

 gate expressed it at Ghent, what workmen should 

 aim at is " social liberty," not " individual lib- 

 erty." Modern civilization loves both, but social 

 liberty, to be worth the name, must rest on indi- 

 vidual liberty. So-called social liberty, which 

 has not this foundation, is another name for the 

 autocracy of a coterie, whether inspired by a 

 Lassalle or a Marx. It is this sort of communal 

 liberty, extolled by M. de Laveleye as existing in 

 Russia, which is a ready instrument for getting 

 rid of inconvenient brethren by handing them 

 over to the conscription. Schemes such as M. 

 de Laveleye favors for the establishment of land- 

 occupying communities of laborers, who should 

 be laborer and farmer in one, and have no land- 

 lord but the state or the commune, are to be 

 deprecated especially for this reason, that they 

 relax the sense of self-dependence, and encour- 

 age men to look elsewhere than to their own en- 

 ergy for the working out of their own welfare. 

 Continental Liberals understand this truth as yet 

 scarcely better than Continental Conservatives. 

 Liberals are as prone to covet the control of the 

 state, as the specific for reforming abuses, as 

 Conservatives for perpetuating them. German 

 Liberals, if they are successfully to combat the 

 claim of Prince Bismarck to be given a dictator- 

 ship for the defense of life and property, must 

 teach German public opinion to repress- plots 

 against society more effectually than police agents. 

 The motto of Social Democracy is social liberty, 

 not individual liberty ; it must be shown that 

 the only safe principle of modern civilization is 

 " social liberty because individual liberty." 



— Edinburgh Review. 



