TO THE POOE. 275^ 



the question whether some cures would not be worse 

 than the disease itself; and the great objection to the 

 socialist's mode of treatment is that it would kill the 

 patient if society could be induced to take the medicine, 

 while nothing short of force would induce it to do so. It 

 would dissolve society if administered. Well, some may 

 .say, the objection is not insurmountable. Better that 

 a bad society should die, and make way for a better, 

 since the death of a society does not imply that of the 

 individuals composing it, nor yet of civilization and 

 culture. But there is a greater objection. There is no 

 logic or persuasion, short of that of force, which could 

 induce society to take the socialist's medicine. Even 

 if poured violently down her throat, society would 

 nauseate it and cast it up again, so long as human nature 

 remains constituted as it is. Even if the socialists got 

 the control of the governmental machinery, and made 

 a general confiscation, a new definition of property, and 

 new legislation, limiting to the utmost conceivable 

 extent the power of individuals either in the acqui- 

 sition or disposal of property ; still, human nature 

 remaining generally the same as before (even in the 

 socialists), and not being alterable either by vote of the 

 majority or the compulsion of cannon, the self-seeking 

 impulses and dispositions inevitably remaining, and the 

 affection for wife and child remaining which things 

 are the real springs of the desire for property the laws 

 abolishing individual property could not be carried out ; 

 and after temporary social chaos, invading all order, 

 extending to all departments of life, of whose nature 

 and extent and effects no revolution yet realized gives 

 us any conception, exhausted society would joyfully 

 hail any self-styled saviour promising deliverance from 

 the unendurable delirium and horror of social anarchy. 



