CHAPTER XXIV.-TERRITORIAL EQUALITY.

THIS aspect of equality has been perceived both by Babeuf and Cabet. The former says:-"Where a people is equitably governed, the good and the evil ought to be equitably shared amongst all its members. A scarcity of things necessary for use, inundations, droughts, the ravages of war, conflagrations, these evils ought to make themselves be felt equally everywhere." The latter says:-" The common distribution of all agricultural produce will compensate the population of poor lands with the superabundance of those of rich and luxuriant vegetation."

CHAPTER XXV.-INTERNATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL EQUALITY.

THE philosophy of the eighteenth century proclaimed the equality and fraternity of nations in calling them to the conquest of liberty; the communistic doctrine of the nineteenth century calls all nations to a common distribution of the riches and produce of their respective countries.

Benefits of Equality.-Buonarotti says:-" Equality is the only institution proper for conciliating all real wants, for directing the useful passions, restraining the dangerous ones, and giving to society a free, happy, peaceful, and durable form." Mr. Mill says:-"The only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals."

SECTION VI.

FRATERNITY.

CHAPTER XXVI.-ORIGIN, ESSENCE, AND REALIZATION OF FRATERNITY.

“Universal reason, propagated by speech and heralded by the Press, demands the recasting of society on the basis of equality and fraternity." -LAMARTINE.

"The influences which tend to unite men, and which give them an interest in each other's welfare, are both more numerous and more powerful than those which throw them into collision."-STEPHEN.

IT

is evident that the idea of an universal brotherhood amongst all mankind originated from the teachings of the Divine Founder of Christianity, and that from the advent of the new creed the ancient system of class distinctions, of masters and slaves, of patricians and plebeians, of free nations and barbarians, of masters and servants, was shaken to its very foundations. Immense must have been the effect of the following words of Christ:-" But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters, for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among

you shall be your servant" (Matt. xxiii. 8-12).

These words teach three important things: firstly, that all men are brethren, and have one common Father, which is God in heaven; secondly, that no man is to assume mastery over another, and to put his fellow creature into subjection; thirdly, that all service should be mutual. Mutual service, or an equal

distribution of labour amongst all the members of the community, is one of the principal features of Communism, and it is only in a true communistic establishment that those who are now the greatest in the land by virtue of birth, wealth, and authority will literally be made the servants of others, but also receive service in return in just proportion to the service rendered. In this spirit alone can all men become useful one to another. The tendency of Christianity towards mutual help and usefulness has been observed by all enlightened philosophers of subsequent ages. In our own times Stuart Mill made it the keystone of a new doctrine of ethics, saying "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by,* and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole."

The opponents of both Utilitarianism and Communism strenuously repudiate biblical references in support of universal brotherhood. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, who is said to be the founder of a religion of inhumanity, discards reference to the literal text of the Bible. 'By taking the philanthropic passages of the four Gospels as the guide of their lives, men would turn the world upside down. They would be a set of passionate communists, breaking down every approved maxim of conduct and every human institution." Instead of brotherly help, he would, on the contrary, establish the following rule of mutual assistance among men: 'Let the miserable help themselves in the appointed manner; let others help them on the appointed terms." Mr. Stephen, is however, not aware that the rule thus laid down is naked Communism, without being quickened by the solacing sentiment of fraternity. The communistic state has its strictly appointed terms; which are, that it will provide food, clothing, and lodging for all who are willing to work, and that those who will not work will

* "These words ought to be engraved on every door of a court of justice, on the observe of every coin, at the head of every contract, and in the memory of every child."--EMIL DE GIRARDIN.

have to starve. Work is therefore the appointed manner by which the miserable can help themselves in the communistic state. But Communism counts upon something more than this hard and fast dictum-work or starvation. And this quickening essence of Communism, is fraternity, or universal brotherhood. Mr. Stephen, however, endeavours to prove the impossibility of a brotherly union amongst all men, and adduces the following argument in support of his assertion. "Though no men are absolutely good, or absolutely bad, yet if and in so far as men are good and bad, they are not brothers but enemies, or, if the expression is preferred, they are brothers at enmity." However, Christ's humane injunction, "Love your enemies," and His association with sinners and publicans, are fatally detrimental to the new article of the religion of inhumanity, which proclaims that men are brothers at enmity. Yet Mr. Stephen is little pleased with the present aspect of antagonism in the conditions and pursuits of the lives of men, and says:— "Nearly the whole life of nearly every human creature is one continued course of injustice, for nearly every one passes his life in providing the means of happiness for himself and those who are closely connected with him, leaving others all but entirely out of account." On the contrary, he wishes that "upon some terms, and to some extent, it is desirable that men should wish well to and should help each other."

Here Communism will come to his assistance, as above indicated; and as the communistic state will establish absolute freedom of religious worship, he will be at liberty to add God and a future state to Mr. Mill's doctrine of utilitarianism; by which conjunction "virtue will cease to be a mere fact, and become the law of society, the members of which may by a strong metaphor be called brothers, if, and in so far as, they obey that law."

The sentiment of brotherly love, assistance, and sacrifice, is well defined by Sir Thomas More, who says:-" The Utopians think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantage as far as the laws allow it; they account it piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns; but they think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another man's pleasure from him; and, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to

dispense with his own advantage for the good of others; and that by this means a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another."

Mr. Stephen, however, absolves himself, in the most unconcerned manner, of the acquirement and cultivation of universal brotherly love, saying: "It would want the clearest of all imaginable revelations to make me try to love a considerable number of people whom it is unnecessary to mention, or affect to care about masses of men with whom I have nothing to do." If all men were similarly devoid of this feeling, the springs of philanthropy would soon cease to flow; for it is preposterous to suppose that a Howard,* Wilberforce, or Reed,+ never felt any sympathy or love for the unfortunate human beings whose lot they strove so persistently to better; or that those sublime. sacrifices by many men having made free gifts of important inventions to the world, were mere acts of bravado and thoughtlessness. And would not Mr. Stephen, seeing a fellow creature in danger of perishing by drowning or burning, run to his rescue, and, braving waves and flames, save the life of a brother, though not a kinsman of his; or would he rather act like that Englishman of whom it is said that he refused to save a drowning man because the man had never been introduced to him?

* John Howard, before setting out on his philanthropic tour into Russia, which ended in his death at Cherson, in November, 1789, justified his undertaking in these words :-"I am not insensible," he wrote, "" of the dangers which must attend such a journey. Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not my conduct be uncandidly imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, deliberate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty, and to the sincere desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellowcreatures than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life." + Dr. Andrew Reed, the philanthropist, being told by one of his sons that he should like to write his life, replied:-" I sprang from the people; 1 have lived for the people-the most for the most unhappy; and the people, when they shall know it, will not allow me to die out of their loving remembrance." Dr. Reed accomplished sufficient to entitle him to the honour of all time, by instituting the following five charities-the London Orphan Asylum, where 3,500 orphans have been educated; the Asylum at Wanstead, where 2,500 infant orphans have been trained; the Asylum at Reedham, where a thousand fatherless children have found a home; the Home for Incurables at Putney; the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots, in which there are now 600 inmates.