make any laws for such as would not submit to a community of all things."

And again :-"So wise a man as Plato could not but foresee that the settling all upon a level was the only way to make a nation happy, which cannot be obtained so long as there is property."

And also:-"I am persuaded that, till property is taken away, there can be no equitable or just distribution of things." Therefore, as Proudhon says, private property is the negation of equality.

And, finally, Sir Thomas More passes this condemnation on property:-" To speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely own that as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily."

Plato himself says:-"Our guardians ought to have neither houses of their own, nor land, nor any possessions, but to receive their subsistence from others, as a reward for their guardianship, and all to consume it in common."

Babeuf criticises property in these words:-"It is individual property by which the craftiest, least conscientious, and luckiest have despoiled and, incessantly, despoil the multitude, who, bound down to wearisome and painful labour, illfed, ill-clothed, and badly lodged, deprived of enjoyments they see superfluously multiplied for others, and undermined by misery, by ignorance, by envy, and by despair, both in their physical and moral strength, behold in society only a deadly enemy, and lose even the possibility of having a country;" for the land is occupied by a few great landowners, and the multitude are shut out from it.

The author thinks this to be the place where to insert an argument of his own against the maintenance of private property. It is to the effect that the results, effects, and benefits of the greatest discoveries and inventions, and the achievements of the greatest efforts of the human intellect, have, with the lapse of time, become common property. The secret of the compass, of the escapement in watches, of clocks, of bookprinting, of lithography, of photography, of the steam-engine, of the telegraph, of the power-loom, of the wool-combing machine, is now divulged to all persons and nations, and has

become common property. The same is the case with all the marvellous productions in arts and discoveries in sciences; the latter of which do not even, from their nature, enjoy protection from patent laws or copyrights, but must be communicated to the scientific world without the briefest delay, in order to secure the priority of discovery. Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton enlightened the world with their astronomical discoveries, and their ideas have become common property. Christopher Columbus discovered America, and Vasca de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and the great ocean ways opened by the labour and ingenuity of those discoverers very soon became used by all nations, without the least regard being paid, or reward being offered to the first discoverers and their descendants, although the greatest riches are, up to the present day, conveyed on those routes by the merchant vessels of all nations.

The works of all the great artists and authors of antiquity, as well as of more recent times, have been and are still reproduced in innumerable copies, and have thus become the common storehouse of all.

True it is that in more modern times patents and copyrights are granted for a short number of years to inventors and discoverers, but no state and no political economist has ever yet perceived the inconsequence of securing a short term of right to the possession of the fruits of labour derived from the efforts of genius, while perpetual security is given to the possessor of land which he cultivated or bought.*

*The communistic character of the present law of copyright has not escaped observation, for we read the following in the Daily News of June 26th, 1875 :-" What we can't make out is this: if all property is the creation of the law, why should the state step in and confiscate one sort of property while giving to other sorts of property a guarantee for ever? We are told that it is for the good of the community that the ownerships in ideas should cease at a certain time, so that books may be sold cheap. And what we can't understand is why the same reasoning is not applied to the ownership in land, for example, which is enjoyed in perpetuity. Would it not be on the same line of argument obviously for the greatest good of the greatest number if the state were to confiscate all the freehold property in the country sixteen years after the death of the present owners, sell that property by public auction to such farmers as choose to buy it, guarantee them the ownership for life, and for sixteen years after their death, and put the results of the sale into the Consolidated Fund,

If the labour which fertilizes the fields of science, art, and industry cannot be perpetuated as private property, neither has the cultivator of the fields of the earth, still less the purchaser of land, any right to expect perpetuation of property.

the general purse of the nation. 'Oh, why, this is rank Communism!' exclaims the person to whom you submit this proposition. Of course it is. I don't advocate this gradual seizure of property at all, but I want the gentlemen who have undertaken to enlighten us unfortunate creatures to tell us why there should be one sauce for the goose and another for the gander. Indeed, it seems to me that the law ought more readily to guarantee property in a poem or in a drama than in a piece of land, for the very reason that the author absolutely creates the thing the ownership of which he seeks to enjoy. We only ask the gentlemen who airily assume that the exclusive proprietorship of land, and that for ever and ever, is a right which is not to be questioned, and who tell us that it is for the good of the community that an author's work should be seized by anyone who pleases, in order that we may have cheap books, to explain why the law should permit Communism in the one case and prohibit it in the other.-A PUZZLED NOVELIST.”

PART II.

Of the Fundamental Principles of Communism relating to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.

THESE three words, adopted as the motto of the first French Republic, contain, in their widest sense, the doctrines of Democracy and Communism. That they have not remained mere empty words and vague aspirations, but have grown into mighty realities which fill the minds of many thinking men with enthusiasm, is acknowledged on all sides. Even the opponents of Communism testify to this fact, and Mr. Stephen does not at all exaggerate the height to which the enthusiasm for the realization of liberty, equality, and fraternity has risen when he says:-" It is one of the commonest beliefs of the day that the human race collectively has before it splendid destinies of various kinds, and that the road to them is to be found in the removal of all restraints on human conduct, in the recognition of a substantial equality between all human creatures, and in fraternity, or general love. The doctrines are, in very many cases, held as religious faith. They are regarded not merely as truths, but as truths for which those who believe in them are ready to do battle, and for the establishment of which they are prepared to sacrifice all merely personal ends."

SECTION I

LIBERTY.

CHAPTER VI.-OF THE NATURE AND DOMAIN OF LIBERTY.

THAT the present state of society is not congenial to the principle of freedom has been frequently pointed out to the reader in various chapters of this book, more especially in those treating on private property, which was said to perpetrate serfdom in disguise, and, in the chapter detailing the wrongs of labour of which the exclusive burden of physical and dangerous work, now borne by the labouring classes alone, was defined as a state of slavery in comparison to the condition of the learned professions whom society now exempts from dangerous and loathsome work. The late Mr. Bronterre O'Brien casts the same blame on the vaunted state of modern society, and shows that we are yet very far from a real state of liberty and freedom, saying:-" Society has been hitherto constituted upon no fixed principles. The state in which we find it is the blind result of chance. Even its advocates do not claim for it any other origin. The right of the strongest-the only right acknowledged by savage man-appears to be still the fundamental charter of all 'civilized' states. The wandering savage asks no other title to his neighbour's produce than his own superior strength or capacity to take it. The civilized man acts precisely, though disguisedly, on the same principle. Their means are different, but the objects and end are the same. What the savage or uncivilized man does individually and directly, by the exercise of mere personal prowess, the civilized man (so-called) does, collectively and circuitously, by cunningly-designed institutions."