of honest men asking not alms, but only work, an opportunity to earn their bread, and yet on the verge of starvation.3

C. A violent shaking or perplexing of public opinion in its relation to the feeling of Right, by revolutions, especially when they follow rapidly one on the heels of another, and take opposite directions. On such occasions, both parties have generally prostituted themselves for the sake of the favor of the masses; and the latter have become conscious of the changes which the force of their arms may effect. In this way, it is impossible that until order is again entirely established, the reins of power should not be slackened in many ways at the demands of the multitude. In this way, too, they are stirred up to the making of pretentious claims which it is afterwards very difficult to silence. In every long and far-reaching revolution, whether undertaken in the interest of the crown, the nobility or the middle classes, we find, side by side with the seed it intended to sow, the tares of communism sprout up.

D. Pretensions of the lower classes in consequence of a democratic constitution. Communism is the logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the principle of equality. Men who always hear themselves designated as "the sovereign people,' and their welfare as the supreme law of the state, are more apt than others to feel more keenly the distance which separates their own misery from the superabundance of others. And, indeed, to what an extent our physical wants are determined by our intellectual mould! The Greenlander feels comfortable in his mud hut, with his oil-jug. An Englishman in the same condition would despair.45

the device on the flags of

Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant · the mutinous silk-weavers at Lyons, in 1832. 4 We are so assured by Vauban (Dime Royale, 34 seq.), of the later years of the reign of Louis XIV., that nearly of the French people begged, that could give no alms, because they were themselves on the very brink of indigence; were fort malaisés, embarassés de dettes et de procès; scarcely one per cent. could be said to be fort à leur aise. How much better off is the present Parisian workman! And yet, at that time, there was not the least spread of communistic doctrines. It is indeed seldom that com

SECTION LXXIX.

SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.
(CONTINUED.)

What has just been said will serve to explain why, in the following four periods of the world's history, socialistic and communistic ideas have been most widespread: among the ancients at the time of the decline of Greece,1 and in that of the degeneration of the Roman Republic;2 among the modpletely down-trodden men react against their wretchedness with great energy.

'If my caprice be the source of law, then my enjoyment may be the source of the division of the nation's resources." Stahl, Rechtsphilosophie, II, 2, 72. That the socialism of Plato, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is proved by the polemic which Aristophanes directs against it in his Ecclesiazuses. See also Aristot., Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing democratization of the state, it became more and more usual for it to bear the expense of the outlay for the means of subsistence of the great crowd. (See Plutarch, Cimo, 10.) Every act of public life was paid for. Citizens were paid for attending popular meetings three oboli per day, while the pay of the soldiers was six, and that of the sailors three. (Thucyd., III, 17; VII, 27; VIII, 45.) The pay of the commonest day laborer was from three to four oboli per day. Aristophan., Eccl., 310, and Pollux, VII, 29. The number of magistrates was very large, in order that as many as possible might participate in this species of remuneration. Thus, in Athens, when it had only about 20,000 inhabitants, there were 6,000 judges. In addition to all this, there were numberless feasts, plays, banquets etc., which were offered to the people gratis. The wealthy who were compelled to meet all the expense thus incurred, lived in such a state of terror of the populace, that they considered their own impoverishment as a species of deliverance. (Xenoph., Conviv., 4, and Lysias, pro Bonis.) Isocrates called it much more dangerous to be rich than to commit a crime, since in the latter case one might obtain a pardon or a mild punishment. (De Permut., p. 160.) (Lysias, De Invalido, de sacra Olea, seq.) There is little difference between this state of things and a semi-community of goods. Only that, indeed, the great mass of the slaves were excluded from enjoying them. The contrast which somewhat later distinguished the Cynics from the Cyreno-Epicureans affords a striking analogy to that which, in our own times, exists between the pure socialists and the worshipers of mammon after the fashion of Doctor Ure. Concerning the utopia of Iambulos, see Diodor., II, 55 ff.

2 Our sources of information concerning the division of the Roman repub. lic into a moneyed oligarchy, and the proletariat are very numerous. Com

erns in the age of the Reformation, and again, in our own day.'

SECTION LXXX.

SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.
(CONTINUED.)

We thus see, that the attempts made by socialism and communism are, by no means, phenomena unheard of in the past,

pare infra, § 205. The speeches of the Gracchi (e. g. Plut., T. Gracchus, 9), and still more the violent discourses of Catiline's conspiracy (Sallust, Cat., 20, 23, 37-39), remind us very forcibly of the shibboleths of modern socialism. We very frequently meet with the expression of a longing desire to return to the most uncivilized and hoary past, when there was no money and no wealth - an aspiration which lies at the very foundation of communism. Thus Virgil, Geo., I, 125, ff., Tibull. I, 3, 35, ff. Propert. II, 13, III, 5, 11; Seneca, Epist., 90; Senec., Oct. II, Hippol., II, 2; Plin., H. N. XXXII, 3. On the other hand, the practice of supporting the populace at the expense of great candidates or of the state, was developed to a very great extent. The masses lived very largely by the sale of their right of suffrage to the highest bidder. At the election of consuls in the year 54, 500,000 thalers were offered to the century called on to vote first. (Cicero, ad Quintum II, 15; ad. A. H. IV, 15.) Even Cato had a part in such bribery. (Sueton., Caes., 19.) In the social reform of the younger Gracchus, besides the limitation of large landownership. the principal points were the following: the sale of wheat under the market price, but only to the inhabitants of Rome itself; the construction of great highways in Italy; colonization at the expense of the state, and the increase of soldiers' pay. (Ritsch, Gracchen, 392 ff.) The socialistic plans of Rullus went much further. Were his agrarian laws put in execution, he would have confiscated very nearly the entire country in the interest of the poor, and of their demagogues! (Cicero, De Lege agrar.) Rome twice experienced a social revolution of the most frightful character, one by which a great portion of all private goods fell into the hands of the propertyless (soldiers), who knew nothing of how to turn it to account or to invest it — under Sulla, and then under the later Triumviri. (Compare Appian, Bell. civil., V, 5, 22.) Complaints concerning the latter, in Horat., Epist., I, 2, 49; Virgil, Buc., IX, 28; Tibull. I, 1, 19, IV, 1, 182; Propert., IV, 1, 129. The elder Gracchus had promised compensation to the last possessors. Tabule novÆ

of Cinna, Catiline, Cælius, Dolebella. Clodius introduced the distribution of wheat, which according to Cicero pro Sext., 25, ate up almost one-fifth of the public revenues. About 320,000 persons were, in this way, supported for a long period of time (Sueton., Caes, 41, Dio C., XLIII, 21; L. LV, 10), but only in such a manner as to keep them from starvation. (Sallust, 268 ed. VOL. I.-16

and peculiar to modern times, as the blind adherents and opponents of them would have us believe. They are rather dis

Bip.) To all this was soon added distributions of salt, meal and oil, also free baths, numberless public plays, colossal banqueting, payment of one year's rent etc. Panem et circenses! (Juvenal, X, 80 seq.) The mere distribution of money under Augustus, in which from 200,000 to 320,000 men participated, cost, each time from 2,500,000 to 6,000,000 thalers. (Monum Ancyr., 372 Wolf.) Extraordinary assistance was, by way of preference, accorded to colonies of the poor. (Sueton., Caes, 42.) Concerning this entire policy, see Plin., Paneg., 26 ff. Even in Constantinople, at the time of its foundation, large distributions of bread were made at the expense of Egypt, although there could scarcely be any real pauperism in that new and flourishing city. (Theod., Cod., XIII, 4, XIV 16; Socrat., II, 13. I can only allude to the plan proposed by the emperor Gallien by the neo-platonist Plotin, to found a city in which the ideas of Plato's republic should be carried out. (Porphyr., V, Plotin., 8.)

3 During the two centuries of which the Reformation constituted the middle point, the transition from the peasant system of agriculture to the large farming system of modern times bore very heavily on the inferior classes. Such, too, was the operation of the fall in price of the precious metals. ($140.) The suppression of the many monasteries caused an increase in the wretchedness of the poor; and the numerous poor-laws enacted in England, Spain etc., were not sufficient to supply a remedy. The feeling of the people during this period of tribulation found expression in the War of the Peasants, in the sect of Anabaptists, in the many reformations and counterreformations, in the revolt of the Netherlands, in the conflicts for the crown in France and England etc. In Italy, the contrast existing between the moneyed oligarchy and the proletariat had been developed several centuries, but from the middle of the sixteenth century, it had become much more oppressive by reason of the universal impoverishment of the country. For an account of the pantheistic "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," with their community of goods and of women, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, II, 18 ff. They were very numerous from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in Italy and France, as well as in Germany, and lead us to the Adamites in the Hussite war. (Aschbach, Geschichte K. Sigismunds, III, 109.) Earlier yet, we have the sect of the Giovannali, who had their property and women in common, and who, in 1355, had won the third of Corsica, but who were afterwards suppressed by Genoa and the Church. (Lebret, Geschichte von Italien, VI, 208 ff.) The coarse socialist, John Balle, bears about the same relation to Wycliffe, that Münzer and Bockholt did to Luther. (Walsingham, Hist. Angliæ in Camden, Scriptt., 275.) Hans Böheim of Würzburg, 1476, seems to be the direct precursor of Münzer. (Ullmann, I, 421 ff.) It was almost as usual in Luther's time, as in 1848, or

eases of the body social, which have affected every highly civilized nation at certain periods of its existence. If the

in our day, to hear of the deep demoralization of trade—the Fuggerei of the Germany of the time- and of the universal system of fraud that prevailed. See the citations in Hagen, Deutschland's Verhältnisse im ReformZeitalter, II, 313 ff. Münzer's fundamental principle: Omnia simul communia! Sebastian Frank, Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschychtbibel etc., 1551, fol. VI, 16, 27, 116, 194, 414, 433. John Bockholt's life presents us with a striking contrast. While they were bringing his perfumed women, sparkling with jewels, to his rose-covered bed, hung with curtains of gold cloth, on which he was reclining, his subjects were a prey to the horrors of famine, to such an extent that they were compelled to salt the bodies of children who had died of starvation. How frightful the end of this communistic benefactor of mankind! Libertine community of goods and women. (Calvin, Instructio adv. Libertinos, cap. 21.) English communists in the age of the reformation. (F. Story, Comment. on the Constitution of the U. S., I, 36.) Even under Cromwell, there were many Englishmen who believed that farmers were no longer obliged to pay rent to land-owners. On the sect of Levellers, see Walker, History of the Independency, II, 152. Even in Erasmus, we find some sympathy with communism. (Enchirid. milit. Christ, 80.) Contra, see Melanchthon, Prolegg. in Cic. de Off., Corp. Reform, XVI, 549 ff. The most remarkable systematic works of this period are Thomas More's, Utopia, 1516, and Campanella's Civitas, solis, 1620. Thomas More bluntly says that all existing governments are in fact only permanent conspiracies of the rich to further their own interests under the mask of the common good, and to despoil labor. The abolition of money, which should be continued in use only to carry on foreign war, would, he contends, remove all misery. There was no really private property in his Utopia. There should be a rigid superintendence of all work by the public authorities, whose duty it should be to see to it, that no one should abandon agricultural pursuits. All should eat at a common table and dress after the same fashion. Internal commerce should give way to a mutual exchange of gifts under the supervision of the state. Campanella, besides a community of goods, recommends continually varying occupation, to last not more than four hours daily; education in common, especially by means of pictures, popular encyclopedias etc., all under the supreme guidance of a despotism to be composed of the wise, some secular and some spiritual, operating through the confessional. Socialists nearly always succeed better in the critical part of their works than in the positive. Compare R. Mohl, Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, § 1, 165 ff.

4 Considering the aversion exhibited against private property by J. F. Rousseau, and the unlimited power which he accords to the majority for the time being in the state (Contrat Social, 1761, II, ch. 4), it cannot