be gathered, would seem to be modelled on Rousseau's picture of primitive man in the state of Nature; free, happy, without religion, without civilization, without laws or government, consequently without national wars; a happy condition between which and us there is only interposed the State and its repressive authority to keep us back. Consequently this authority must be attacked, and the State overthrown, and then the happiness of the state of Nature will be once again within our grasp. But here there arises a slight incoherence or contradiction of doctrine. Bakunin desires what he calls the "autonomy of the individual," or as a disciple expresses it, "that every one should be free to do as he pleases;" with no restraining laws, as in the land of Israel, when there was no king, and “every man did that which was right in his own eyes." But as he or his disciples have also foreshadowed the "amorphous commune as the autonomous unit and co-operative labour in field or factory as the means of life in the restored state of Nature, it is difficult to see how every man can be autonomous, or himself the masterful, uncontrollable unit, if there is to be any social intercourse, or any organization of labour, or at least unless the large system of production is abolished. It is difficult to take part in the large production without some surrender of Freedom, and it is perhaps a perception of this difficulty that makes Prince Krapotkin advocate an extension of the smaller industries. But if we may regard the Com

9 See art. Nineteenth Century for October, 1888.

mune as the unit with co-operative labour even on a small scale as the goal, this would correspond as nearly as circumstances allow to the stage at which Rousseau affirmed mankind should have arrested itself, the stage when men lived in little village societies, and before they made the fatal social contract which gave birth to civil society; the happy savage state before civilization or laws, refined arts or luxuries; and if this be the origin of the anarchists' ideas, it would partly explain their hostility to civilization, art, science, and their glorification of "holy ignorance." But, however this be, the germs of their aspirations and creed are to be found in Rousseau's earlier writings, and probably were thence gathered by Bakunin. But that Rousseau did not think a return to the past possible, that he did not wish for non-government, but a good government and reforms, we have just seen. The pity was that neither the reforms he desired, nor the best government as the means of accomplishing them, could be attained without a revolution.

The Revolution came for which Rousseau and others had prepared men's minds. What was the Revolution? At first a rising against the privileges and unjust exemptions of the nobility and clergy, in the sequel a rising against property, largely held in their hands, and an attempt to bring in the reign of equality; in short, a Socialistic Revolution, in its essence, as M. Taine regards it, although the word Idid not then exist. The course of the revolution turned entirely on the question of property. It was

a contest (in which the third estate and the people were on one side) for a new distribution of property and of political power as a means towards it. It has, indeed, been asserted that it was a Bourgeois revolution; that it was made by the Bourgeoisie, and that they were the sole gainers. This is partly true, partly erroneous, for the people gained likewise. They gained the land; at least two millions were added to the peasant proprietors that existed before the Revolution, and all were relieved from oppressive feudal burdens. It is, however, true that the rising middle class, envious of the political power as well as the exclusive privileges and social position of the upper classes, were the leaders of the assault on power and privilege, and that they finally overthrew them, while ever afterwards, even during the strong rule of Napoleon and the time of the restored Bourbons, they monopolized place, and to a great extent, from the fall of Napoleon, political power. Nevertheless the people, as stated, gained very considerably by the Revolution. They had been the poor and suffering class, and they gained the most from the material point of view. They not only gained the land, but they also gained the consciousness of their strength which, as shown by repeated instances, they have never lost since the great Revolution—a fact which makes the people a power in France beyond what they are in any other country. It is true that since the Revolution they have fallen into a new subjection in the great towns-the economic subjection to capital, -but the French working classes have very emphatically shown that they will not submit resignedly

to the power of a plutocracy, while their countrymen in the rural districts have shaken themselves free of the feudal aristocracy.

The Revolution was forced to fight. The "French principles" were dangerous, were infectious. It was the cause of the people and partly of the growing middle class over Europe against the privileged classes. The Titan war followed between the French nation in arms and the coalesced kings of Europe. When the excitement was all over, when the thunders of the cannon were hushed, it was found in fact that the terrible war had been for the most part in vain; that all the blood and treasure had been spent for little result from the reactionists' point of view; that, though men may be killed, ideas are impenetrable by bullets, and that men of the sword may "as easily cleave the intrenchant air with their keen blades" as principles like those that underlay the Revolutionary movement; that the Democratic flood was, in fact, only temporarily checked, to acquire thereafter increased and irresistible volume and force.

CHAPTER III.

MODERN SOCIALISM: FROM ST. SIMON TO KARL

MARX.

I.

THE ferment of ideas and the gorgeous hopes first aroused by the Revolution ushered in a fresh era of Social Utopias, as well as patent political constitutions. Babœuf, in France, advocated pure Communism in addition to liberty and perfect equality, though without showing how liberty is reconcilable with Communism. In England also, Godwin, in his "Political Justice," impressed with the evils of the existing order which he powerfully denounced, declared for Communism as involving the lesser evils. He makes somewhat light of the tremendous difficulties in the way, answers them one by one more from the lofty point of view of the philosopher than of the man. He is, however, logical and thoroughgoing, since with Plato, or going beyond him, he does not shrink from, nor stop short of, a community of women and children as well as of property. From this work Shelley derived the like social and political faith, as shown in the "Revolt of Islam" and others of his writings. Other English poets, including Coleridge and Southey, were smitten with the ideal