and have given occasion for the repressive legislation recently carried through the German Parliament. In England the influence of the International has been magnified, in order to raise a prejudice against the working class. Its real influence here may be appreciated from the limited pecuniary support which it has received. The entire income is stated in a table published by Mr. Howell:

In justice to the British workmen, the debates and proceedings of our Trades Union Congresses should be read in parallel columns with the mad declamation at the Congress of Socialists at Ghent, or at the Congress of French workmen, so graphically described by Mr. Frederic Harrison, whose name I cannot mention without expressing that gratitude, which all persons interested in maintaining amicable relations between workman and employer ought to feel towards one, who has done such excellent service in the capacity of mediator. The number of men must always be small who can maintain friendly relations both with capital and labour, and who are able to appreciate the claims which each interest has upon the other. 'We habitually live in our ordinary selves,' says Mr. Matthew Arnold, 'which do not carry us beyond the ideas and wishes of the class to which we happen to belong.' Mr. Crompton, Mr. Morley, and others have laboured in the same field. By their sympathy with the masses, and by the pains they have taken to appreciate and interpret their

Socialism

in France.

ideas to the world, these gentlemen have shown to the workmen that a high culture teaches no narrow or selfish lessons, and that wealth, where it is ill gotten and ill spent, is as contemptible a thing in the estimation of the leaders of thought in the so-called upper classes, as it is in the jealous eyes of the Trades Unionists themselves.

Socialistic schemes have been more or less in favour on the Continent since the period preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution. Marat was the chosen prophet of the working men, whose confidence he gained by his adhesion to a programme not dissimilar to the scheme adopted by the Revolutionary Government of 1848. The fervid imagination of the French nation has been prolific of novel plans for the regeneration of society by fundamental changes in the distribution of property and the relations of capital to labour.

The characteristic tenets of the authors of the most remarkable social and industrial theories promulgated in France are concisely summed up in the report of the recent Parliamentary Committee on the condition of the labourers in that country. The keynote of St. Simon was, 'To every man according to his capacity; to every capacity according to his work.' The Fourierists insisted that every man should have full scope for the free and congenial employment of his powers. Proudhon asked for gratuitous credits and loans without interest. St. Simon proposed to entrust the partition of the products of labour to an authority, whom he designated as the high-priest of his ideal society. Fourier proposed to regulate the earnings of

each individual according to the harmonious verdict of individual opinions. Another school framed regulations for the distribution of property according to the necessities of each individual. The principle of the Luxembourg school was equality for all. The inevitable outcome of all these systems was anarchy.

favouring

its growth

in Ger

many.

In Germany, the general spread of education has Conditions. prepared the soil for Socialistic doctrines, under conditions most favourable for their growth. Where the many are poor and the few are rich, where there is a national taste for speculation, and where compulsory military service is enforced with the utmost stringency, in the very throes of a commercial crisis, and when the people are engaged in a hard struggle for bare existence, there is obviously much to foment a spirit of rebellion among the masses against the social order, under which they find their lot so hard.

The short-lived outburst of prosperity which followed the conclusion of the Franco-German war served but to aggravate the sufferings of a population, who have been driven back into a still lower depth of poverty than that from which they had lately emerged. Prices had risen with the general inflation of wages, and, when the reaction came, it was not easy to curtail the cost of living, in proportion to the diminution of earnings.

assassina

German

Emperor.

For the dreamy German people, in their distressed Attempted condition, Socialistic doctrines possessed a peculiar tion of the attraction; and the authorities were already becoming uneasy at the progress of the revolutionary spirit, when the cowardly attempt to assassinate the Emperor of

Repressive legislation evoked by it.

The railway riots in America.

Germany took place, and gave an impetus to repressive legislation. In the course of the debates in the German Parliament, Prince Bismarck declared that they had to contend with a dangerous foe in social democracy, a foe who threatened both the State and society. If they were to live on under the tyranny of such a com pany of bandits, all existence must come to an end. It was possible that some more victims might fall on the side of order; but each who met such a fate might remember that he fell on the field of honour for the good of his country.

6

A recent letter from the Times' correspondent at Berlin gives particulars of the proceedings taken under the new legislation. During the first two months after the Socialist law came into force, 375 repressive injunctions were addressed to 174 clubs and societies, 44 newspapers, and 157 non-periodical publications. The Socialists have fixed their head-quarters at Leipsic, where they sit at the feet of MM. Liebknecht and Bebel. The Government will be aided in its efforts by the jealousy of rival prophets of Socialism. Continental governments have always been prone to coercive measures. The principles, which have guided our legislation, have been more just and more wise. We have allowed a large latitude to discussion, but have been prompt and severe in the punishment of crime.

In the United States, the Irish and German immigrants have imported communistic theories into the country; and the shameless combinations of certain railway companies and coal proprietors to maintain prices, by an artificial restriction of supplies to the

public, made it natural that some resistance should be offered to the reduction of wages. The accumulation of colossal fortunes in the hands of a knot of speculators had naturally excited a feeling of irritation.

The policy pursued by the companies in question is described by Mr. Lowthian Bell. Referring to the

increase in the cost of coal and in the manufacture of pig-iron, he says that, of the 46,000,000 tons of coal worked in the United States, about 21,000,000 are anthracite, and yet the market of this large quantity of mineral is practically in the hands of six large companies, who represent 80 to 85 per cent. of the entire output. It was no secret that under such a system the profits of coal property had been very great.'

When the railway servants united with the lawless mobs, which had already begun to establish themselves in American cities, and proceeded from orderly remonstrance to incendiarism, they forfeited all claim to sympathy. The previous conduct of those responsible for the administration of the railway companies was, nevertheless, deserving of censure.