doctrine spread so rapidly all over the globe, and produced such radical and beneficial changes in human society, on so large a scale. But even in our day, the same power of the true Christian apostle has exerted a like influence wherever in his zeal for man's welfare he can act without his efforts being opposed and thwarted by inveterate enemies. Thus in Paraguay, as soon as the missionaries of the Church obtained from the Kings of Spain permission to lay the foundation of their "Reductions" (as they were called) without the interference of outsiders, the Christian social idea was realized in such degree as surprised and delighted all unprejudiced minds. The most uncouth and barbarous savages learned in a few years all the arts of civilized life, and lived supremely contented in their miniature republics, happy with innocent festivities, and cheered by the sweetest emotions of religion. The only fault the most captious critics could find, was that the Indians were children, and their religious teachers not bold enough in their theories. The first defect was certainly charming as a novelty in the midst of the cold and surfeited eighteenth century, when they flourished. The second weak side of it rather pleases us as a contrast to the more than cold utopias of modern socialists, of which we shall speak presently.

It is true that in all her social schemes, Christianity assumes that man is a sinner; not a totally depraved creature, as John Calvin pretended, but inclined to evil, and rushing into it unless he effectually uses the means which God places at his disposal, and which we call divine grace. Modern socialism, on the contrary, invariably starts with the assumption that man is a perfect being, always preferring good to evil, and infallibly drawn by a powerful attraction towards what is conformable to his best nature. A sad experience has more than proved which is the true view of human nature; and the complete collapse, one after another, of all socialistic systems antagonistic to religion, would be another proof were it needed. After these general considerations on true Sociology, it is time to come to the history of Socialism itself, its true origin and first manifestations.

Before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Socialism, as it is now understood and preached, was totally unknown. If Protestantism did not give birth to it, it powerfully disposed men towards it. The social theorists, from the Middle Ages down to the latter part of the last century, were all more or less Christian, such as Roger Bacon, More, Campanella, and Fénelon. The books they wrote were, on the whole, inoffensive romances, and the most timid men could not reasonably have been frightened by the total adoption of their wildest dreams. During the second part of the last century the sect of Economists arose in France, with Turgot at

its head, and in England, Adam Smith, J. Balny, and others elaborated the system of what has been called political economy. A very remarkable feature in both these theories was the total exclusion of Christian ideas which all writers had previously connected more or less with social systems of every kind. Even those who previously had never said a word about Christianity, as Fénelon, in his Republic of Salentum-an episode of Telemachus-were evidently swayed by their Christian belief. But the new considerations on capital and labor, on the production of wealth, etc., which were the main objects of economists in England and France, took no account whatever of Christian principles, and discussed social problems in the simple light of unaided human reason and altogether irrespective of morality. But still most of the axioms on which human society had so far relied for its security, appeared to remain untouched by the new systems; and it required very careful study to detect any danger in those theories, though there certainly was. The step had been made, however, and for the first time social science boldly stalked forth in a form which was altogether independent of Christianity, and outside of every moral consideration.

The French Revolution boldly and avowedly went much further, and a few years after its first explosion, in 1789, the wildest social theories began to assume shape, and were not only emancipated, as the word has it, from all religious notions (as were those of the economists) but altogether antagonistic to them. Babeuf was the first to openly proclaim them, in 1796; but they had surely brewed in his mind from the very beginning of this political and social effervescence. Is it possible to point out at this day the true genesis of Babeuf's ideas with which many other men were soon found to coincide? We cannot see any other explanation of it than is found in the pregnant revolutionary motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," which, as every one knows, became the sole object of thought and enthusiastic desire for multitudes of Frenchmen during this period of madness. The reader will be better able to judge of this after we shall have briefly commented upon it.

Liberty or freedom did not mean in this motto what it had meant for our ancestors from the beginning of the Middle Ages. Freedom was then thought to be the enjoyment of certain rights consecrated by the existing hierarchy of ranks. These were the rights of the Church and the rights of the king or ruler. There were those, too, of noblemen and of churchmen; those of burghers and of ants; those of military men, consecrated by the rules of chivalry, and those of civil guilds and trade corporations; those of craftsmen and of students in universities, etc.

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Whenever a man was not prevented from enjoying those rights he was said to have the enjoyment of his freedom. If an arbitrary

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power of any kind deprived him of any of them, he was regarded as deprived of his freedom. When Magna Charta was extorted from the king in England it was merely the restoration of the rights of the Church, of the nobility, of the common people, which had been taken away or curtailed by a tyrant. But the word, liberty, was understood very differently by the French revolutionists. It was even the very reverse of all this, and became in their estimation complete emancipation from all superior powers; from those of the Church, of the king, of the nobility, of the parliament considered as a corporation, of the civil, religious, and trades' guilds, which still existed, etc. It was, in fact, under the name of liberty, the complete destruction of freedom as it had been defined, because the rights of all were sacrificed at once; and there remained nothing but the rabble, to which was granted supreme power, under the name of sovereignty of the people. But as no human society can exist without a power of some kind, all power was henceforth vested in the state as the executive servant of the people. This is precisely the fundamental principle of socialism, as it is now generally understood.

As to equality, the consequence of it is more glaring still, and it is especially out of this particular hobby that socialism was born. No one had ever imagined before that human society could exist without a well-determined hierarchy of ranks, and an indefinite inequality of functions. The idea of equality before the law is very different. A Christian can have no objection to it, because it is evidently founded on the most elementary principles of the Christian religion. But the new revolutionists in France gave a very different meaning to the notion of equality. According to many of them, at least, a happy social state absolutely required that all should have the same rights, the same degrees of enjoyment, the same quantity of property even, or an approach to it, the same means of pushing themselves in the world and reaching posts honor; nay, the same amount of knowledge, as we will soon have an opportunity to see. This was evidently all derived from Rousseau's principles; and Rousseau's Contrat Social was the new gospel. All his doctrine culminated in equality, and by consequence in the suppression of superiority of any kind.

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These new theorists-we mean the revolution's most ardent promoters-imagined that by obliging all men to come down to the same level, they would establish on earth a most happy social state, such as the world had never seen before. They seemed to be intimately persuaded that until their time men had been miserable only because some had been rich and others poor; some had ruled and others had obeyed; some had been honored and others unknown; some had led mankind by the loftiness of their thoughts

and others had to follow the lead of their betters.

Their avowed object was to remedy the enormous evils under which mankind had grown from centuries, owing to the inequality of condition in which men are born, live, and die. Totally rejecting the Christian view, they thought that man is naturally good, was not born in sin; that he possessed in himself all the elements of happiness; that, were it not for his surroundings, namely, for the trammels of an artificial society, in which he was enslaved, he would have the means of asserting his freedom and enjoying life, unless he first entirely destroyed the universal cause of all his evils, by overturning the social edifice in which he was immured as in a dungeon, and out of which he must first emerge before he could build up the palace which his imagination had created.

It is undeniable that these dreams were openly indulged in by many Frenchmen at that time; and this alone explains the alacrity with which they abolished in a single night all the privileges of the nobility, the nobles themselves taking the lead in the strange process. All social distinctions forthwith were to disappear; all classes were to be reduced to a dead level; thenceforth no one should be able to raise his head above his fellows. Ever since that day, the importance of preserving in society as perfect a social equality as possible, has been the hobby of very many Frenchmen. By public opinion, by legislation, by every means in their power, they have endeavored to give to their nation an aspect which men have had nowhere else. They were certainly working against nature in fulfilling that hard task, for no law is so constantly and visibly active in this world as that of variety and inequality. This is evident everywhere in the universe, but it is seen pre-eminently in man's nature. For his faculties of soul and body, his aspirations and aims, even his unconscious opportunities during life, are all of them most multiform and various, and the progress of time constantly tends to increase these differences, so as to render them truly ineradicable. A large class of socialists of our day pretend that man's nature can change in that respect, by evolution; that it has already been greatly modified, and is destined to undergo modifications of far greater importance. We will come back to the consideration of this subject in another paper.

Those men, indeed, from the beginning, were so blind as not to see their folly; and particularly during the whole period of the revolution, the master spirits among them were endeavoring to bring down the entire nation to the rude state of life known as sansculottism, in which no individual could ever think of rising above his fellows, except as regards the bombast of his noisy patriotism, always with the proviso that all should be satisfied with iron and bread, du fer et du pain. This was especially the theory of St. Just,

the great metaphysician of the party, who can be called without injustice to his memory, one of the coolest monsters that ever existed.

But as nature always vindicates her rights, and eventually triumphs over the folly of men, many distinctions continued to exist, and many more were brought back by Bonaparte when his time came. On this very subject of equality, the two great montagnards, Robespierre and Marat, had not exactly the same notions. The first, although he was the bosom friend of St. Just, and though he always used the most endearing expressions when addressing the poor people, and commiserating their distress, invariably took good care to distinguish himself from them, at least by his dress, his habits, and his language. The second, Marat, took a sort of pride, not only in expressing pity for his dear sansculottes, but dressed, ate, and spoke exactly as they did. This last-named apostle of freedom was altogether consistent in his advocacy of equal rights, the other was not. It is needless to carry the description further; and it must suffice here to say that most of the features of the subsequent socialism were evidently copied from this model, and the communism which naturally followed was destined to be the complete realization of this great doctrine of equality.

Of Fraternity, the last term of the revolutionary triad, less needs be said. It may all be comprised in the remark that the great ostensible object of socialism is to establish a true brotherhood among men, and to realize consequently, the third term of the celebrated motto. Like results, however, befell this socialist brotherhood, which was the fate of the revolutionists' fraternity. It is well known that it all ended in a universal fight of factions. By a just retribution inflicted on them by Almighty God, the first idea they had as brothers, of clubbing together to trample on the rights of foreign nations, and on those of the superior classes among themselves, which they ferociously hated, terminated in a worse than fratricidal war, in which they seemed to have no other political object than literally to cut each other's throats. Our children will see, in case socialism succeeds in its plans, if its ultimate end will be very different.

Before leaving this part of our subject, it is proper to say a word on the remarkable hatred of religion during the revolutionary period, and which many socialistic systems of our day seem to have inherited from their ancestors. It is true, some pleasant eulogists of that period in France (where there are still so many admirers of the French Revolution), have thought that nearly all the principles advocated by it were Christian principles. The fact is, however, that the chief endeavor of most of its leaders, was evidently to destroy every kind of religion, even simple theism itself. God's