he buries them.  In seven years the savings thus rendered inert and unproductive amount to eleven hundred million francs.  But since the lesser bourgeoisie bury as much more, with the same purpose, France loses every seven years the interest of at least two thousand millions,—­that is to say, about one hundred millions; a loss which in forty-two years amounts to six hundred million francs.  But she not only loses six hundred millions, she fails to create with that money manufacturing or agricultural products, which represent a loss of twelve hundred millions; for, if the manufactured product were not double in value to its cost price, commerce could not exist.  The proletariat actually deprives itself of six hundred millions in wages.  These six hundred millions of dead loss (representing to a stern economist a loss of twelve hundred millions, through lack of the benefits of circulation) explain the condition of inferiority in which our commerce, our merchant service, and our agriculture stand, as compared with England.  In spite of the difference of the two territories, which is more than two thirds in our favor, England could remount the cavalry of two French armies, and she has meat for every man.  But there, as the system of landed property makes it almost impossible for the lower classes to obtain it, money is not hoarded; it becomes commercial, and is turned over.  Thus, besides the evil of parcelling the land, involving that of the diminution of horses, cattle, and sheep, the section of the Code on inheritance costs us six hundred millions of interest, lost by the hoarding of the money of the peasantry and bourgeoisie, and twelve hundred millions, at least, of products; or, including the loss from non-circulation, three thousand millions in half a century!”

“The moral effect is worse than the material effect,” cried the rector.  “We are making beggar-proprietors among the people and half-taught communities of the lesser bourgeoisie; and the fatal maxim ‘Each for himself,’ which had its effect upon the upper classes in July of this year, will soon have gangrened the middle classes.  A proletariat devoid of sentiment, with no other god than envy, no other fanaticism than the despair of hunger, without faith, without belief, will come forward before long and put its foot on the heart of the nation.  Foreigners, who have thriven under monarchical rule, will find that, having royalty, we have no king; having legality, we have no laws; having property, no owners; no government with our elections, no force with freedom, no happiness with equality.  Let us hope that before that day comes God may raise up in France a providential man, one of those Elect who give a new mind to nations, and like Sylla or like Marius, whether he comes from above or rises from below, remakes society.”

“He would be sent to the assizes,” said Gerard.  “The sentence pronounced against Socrates and Jesus Christ would be rendered against them in 1831.  In these days as in the old days, envious mediocrity lets thinkers die of poverty, and so gets rid of the great political physicians who have studied the wounds of France, and who oppose the tendencies of their epoch.  If they bear up under poverty, common minds ridicule them or call them dreamers.  In France, men revolt in the moral world against the great man of the future, just as they revolt in the political world against a sovereign.”