amongst us.  Such are the avowed principles of the Socialists.  According to them, all property is theft, and taking by violence is only recovering stolen goods!  When a nation has come to this deplorable pass, what, it may be asked, can cure it?  The malady is not political; it is social.  Perhaps, under a right development of industry, France has not too great a population; but, subject to the present misdirection of its energies, the position of the country is assuming a gravity of aspect which may well engage the most earnest consideration.  The least that could be recommended is an immediate change in the law which so unscrupulously subdivides and ruins landed property.

The history of the Revolution of 1789-93, must have made a feeble impression, if it has failed to print a deep and indelible conviction on the mind, that the acts of that great and wicked drama would some day be bitterly expiated.  To expect anything else would be to impeach the principles of everlasting justice.  Bearing in remembrance the horrid excesses of almost an entire nation, nothing that now occurs in France affords us the least surprise.  The anarchical revolts of 1851, are only a sequence of crimes committed upwards of half a century ago.  Philosophically, the beginning and the end are one thing.  Blind with rage against all that was noble, holy, and simply respectable, the innocent were dragged in crowds to the scaffold, and their property confiscated and disposed of.  See the consequence after a lapse of sixty years, ‘My sin hath found me out.’  The ill-gotten wealth has been the very instrument to punish and prostrate.  A robbery followed by divisions among the spoilers.  Waste succeeded by clamorous destitution.  What a lesson!

It is needless to say, that Socialism, which proposes a universal re-distribution of property, with some unintelligible organisation of labour—­all on an equality, no rich and no poor, no masters and no servants, everybody sharing his dinner with his neighbour—­is a fancy as baseless as any crotchet which even the ‘pattern nation’ has ever concocted.  Yet, it is not the less likely to be carried into execution, perhaps only the more likely from its practical absurdity.  Of course, the more educated and wealthy portion of the nation view the doctrines of Socialism, as far as they can comprehend them, with serious apprehension; but unhappily for France, these classes uniformly submit to any folly or crime, which comes with the emphasis of authority, valid or usurped.  At present, they may be said to have made a compromise, bartering civil liberty for bare safety—­permission to live!  But how long this will last, and what form the tenure of property is to assume, are questions not easy to answer.  It would not surprise us to see the nation, in its corporate capacity, assume the position of universal lender of money on, or proprietor of, embarrassed estates; in which case the ‘ryot system’ of India will, strangely enough, have found domestication in Europe!  Is this to be the next experiment?