LOIS BLANC

Liberty, he argued, was but a vain and sterile phrase of rhetoric, so long as a small class held exclusive possession of the instruments of production ; and could therefore withhold, if so disposed, the means of subsistence from the greater number. The bourgeoisie virtually exercised over the popular masses that power of life and death which the nation had lately wrested, from the privileged oligarchs of feudalism.
These, extreme views he still further developed in the first volumes of his "Revolution Françaisé," wherein he argues that all the great movements of modern history, and all the nobler conceptions of the foremost thinkers, reformers, and philosophers, tend irresistibly to Communism, or—as he, with a view to euphemism, styles it—to Fraternity, as the ultimate issue of all human progress. On this subject it would, perhaps, be not amiss to let so lucid a reasoner state his own argument in his own words. The first chapter of his "Histoire de la Revolution Française" opens with the following paragraphs :—

"Three great principles, share between them the world and history—Authority, Individualism, Fraternity.

" The principle of Authority is the one which Causes nations to rest upon beliefs blindly accepted, upon superstitious respect for tradition, upon inequality ; and which, as its method of government, employs main force.

"The principle of Individualism is the one which, taking the unit man without the social pale, renders him sole judge of the medium that surrounds him, and of himself; gives him a lofty estimate of his rights, without pointing out to him his duties ; leaves him to his own powers ; and which, in place of all government, proclaims the rule of ' let well alone.'

" The principle of Fraternity is the one which, regarding the members of the great human family as bound together in fellowship, tends to organise, at some future day, all society—which is the work of man—upon the model of the human frame—which is God's work ; and founds the power to govern upon persuasion, and upon the free assent of the heart.

" Authority has been wielded by Catholicism with amazing effect. It prevailed down to Luther's day.

"Individualism, inaugurated by Luther, unfolded itself with irresistible strength; and, shaking itself free of the religious element, it has triumphed in France by means of the publicists in the Constituent Assembly. It is lord of the present: it is the soul of modern life.

" Fraternity announced by the thinkers of the Mountain, then disappeared in a tempest ; and, at present, only beckons to us from afar in the regions of the ideal. But all great spirits appeal to it ; and already it fills and enlightens the highest sphere of intellects.

" Of these three principles—the first engenders oppression by stifling the individual; the second leads to oppression by reason of anarchy ; the third alone becomes, by harmony, the parent of liberty."

Such notions as these—worked out with a brilliant dash of style, and a great precision of logic—naturally appealed to the passions, interests, and cravings of a certain number of readers ; and the author of '" L'Organisation de Travail," and of " La Revolution Française," did, indeed, acquire an extensive popularity among the workmen of Paris and of the chief manufacturing centres. But the more thriving and prosperous orders of the nation—all, in fact, who had any property, position, or prospects to be imperilled by this fresh adjustment of the social relations—henceforth put the daring Utopist under the ban of their extreme disfavour, and came to regard him as a destructive and dangerous architect of ruin.