5 US FALLACIES OF THE COMMUNE. 



Every millionaire enriches the community. It is 

 undoubtedly the duty of the government to miti- 

 gate, so far as lies within its power, the miseries 

 which result from over-population. But as long as 

 men continue unequal in patience, industry, talent, 

 and sobriety, so long there will be rich men and poor 

 men — men who roll in their carriages, and men who 

 die in the streets. If all the property of this country 

 were divided, things would soon return to their actual 

 condition, unless some scheme could also be devised 

 for changing human nature ; and as for the system 

 of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a 

 man to rise or to fall, it is merely the old caste 

 system revived ; if it could be put into force, all 

 industry would be disheartened, emulation would 

 cease, mankind would go to sleep. It is not, how- 

 ever, strange that superficial writers should suppose 

 that the evils of social life can be altered by changes in 

 government and law. In the lands of the East, in the 

 Spain and Portugal of the sixteenth century, in the 

 France of the eighteenth century, in the American 

 Colonies, and in England itself, whole classes were at one 

 time plunged by misgovernment into suffering of body 

 and apathy of mind. But a government can confer few 

 benefits upon a people except by destroying its own 

 laws. The great reforms which followed the publica- 

 tion of the " Wealth of Nations," may all be summed 

 up in the word Repeal. Commerce was regulated in 

 former times by a number of paternal laws, which have 

 since been happily withdrawn. The government still 

 pays with our money a number of gentlemen to give 

 us information respecting a future state, and still 

 requires that in certain business transactions a docu- 

 ment shall be drawn up with mysterious rites in a 



