social earthquake, which cause the pillars of society to shake, there, too, the same causes produce caution and a very careful re-examination of the imperfect foundation. Evil, disastrous, as were some of the results of these three great revolutions and their socialistic accompaniments which we have now considered in order, they have also produced great and lasting effects for good, which may be productive of still greater benefits in the future. The nations of Europe have been taught that the foundations of social systems are not as secure as some would lead us to suppose; rulers have been warned to watch the signs of the times, and to think not only of repairing the walls, but, if needs be, to look to the foundation of the social edifice, with a view to strengthen and improve the society of the future.

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER XI.

LASSALLE AND GERMAN SOCIALISM.

IN the last chapter we prepared the reader's mind to bid farewell to Arcadia and the fair scenes of Romantic Socialism, and to ascend with us the bleak heights of more rigorously scientific schemes of social improvement. But before we finally arrive "on the heights," we shall, in ascending, not be without some fair glimpses of Utopian landscapes, led as we are by so genial a guide as Ferdinand Lassalle.

Lassalle, his immediate connection with abstract Socialism on the one hand, and his work as a controversialist, agitator, and the leader of the Social Democracy in Germany on the other, will form the subject-matter of this and the next chapter, whilst Karl Marx and the International will form the concluding subject of this volume.

Properly speaking, the real intellectual leader of this movement was Rodbertus, a ripe scholar, a

country gentleman, a member of the National Assembly in 1848, and as such, the leader of the Left Wing-the Constitutional Opposition—who enjoyed the honour of being Prussian Minister just for one day and then retired into the solitude of private life to pursue his economic studies.

In the region of pure speculation he is one of the foremost among scientific socialists in Germany. Following the strictly abstract modes of the English economists, cordially accepting their theory that labour is the sole source of economic values or valu-! able commodities, he, though himself a Conservative in social politics, and an opponent to revolutionary measures, led the way unintentionally to the extreme ✩ denunciations of capital, and the extravagant claims for labour which lie at the foundation of all recent socialistic schemes. A believer in social evolution, Rodbertus anticipates a slow transformation of our present economic condition, similar to the change which took place in the political institutions of Europe in the transition from the modes of government prevalent under the Roman Empire to those under the Christian-Germanic constitution. He deprecates any design of interfering with property in the existing process of industry by means of money-wages. At the same time he wished to bring about a more satisfactory relationship between labour and capital,

to raise the character and conditions of the workers of society, and to diminish the gulf between employer and employed by legal and peaceable means. He shows that what is called the free contract between employer and employed differs little from slavery, as far as the labourers are concerned, since the scourge of prospective hunger is as much an incentive to labour among ourselves as the whip of the slavedriver elsewhere. He directs attention to the evils of unequal distribution of property in rendering the poor permanently helpless in the endeavour to compete with the rich for a proper share in the distribution of wealth. He shows how, according to existing relations between them, there is a constant and enormous increase of wealth among a small number of enterprising capitalists and landed proprietors, whereas the condition of the masses remains comparatively unimproved.

The various socialistic schemes to remedy this state of things are, in his opinion, so many empirical attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, or half-measures to cure social evils which ought rather to be prevented by legislation. He sees in the gradual introduction of rational laws to restrict the undue growth of capital in a few hands, and to impede the further progress of abject pauperism among the masses, the only means for counteracting that cruel

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law of nature according to which the strongest alone survive in the struggle for existence, whereas the rest perish, or are condemned to life-long misery and despair. For by the admission of the whole orthodox school of economy the average rate of wages, owing to this competition struggle and constant increase of the labouring classes in the case of any considerable rise in the price of labour, rarely rises above the minimum required for maintaining life and securing the necessary services of the labourer. In the same way, he remarks, beasts of burden receive a certain indispensable quantity of fodder, and machines receive fuel and attention to keep them in proper working order. Now this state of things, he maintains, can only be remedied if the State will undertake the regulation of prices and the fixing of a normal day of labour, and by fair legislation, generally, bring about a more equalised diffusion of property among all classes of society.

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In this way, he hopes, the future social constitution of peoples will be as superior to the present as ours is compared with the slave-systems of antiquity. would be out of place here to enter at large into the thirty-four abstruse reasons given by Rodbertus in support of these suggestions, or to define more scientifically his method of social reform to prevent a social revolution. What we have stated in general