Now the slave has become a citizen, and the labourer free. He is recognized as the equal of the wealthiest. He votes, he may enter Parliament. He claims, or will claim, property: and how shall we resist him, with a philosophy and a religion which justify his claim? The ancients, whose religion and philosophical notions absolutely condemned such pretensions, and even prevented their coming to life, did not succeed in establishing democratic institutions side by side with inequality of conditions, although the problem had only to deal with free citizens, living by the labour of others. How should we succeed better, when we have to consider a whole nation without any exception? In France, the question is already prominent. She has reached the point, common in history, where the higher classes, menaced by the demands of those beneath them, and terrified by the horrors of social strife, seek safety in a dictator. If, at this moment, 1877, the so-called conservative party opposes the establishment of the Republic, it is not from any exclusive attachment to monarchical forms; but simply because it is afraid triumphant democracy would soon lead to claims of an equalitarian nature. We should not regard the gloomy situation of France with disdainful pity; her lot will one day be ours, Hodié mihi, cras tibi , as the funeral inscription runs. Everywhere socialism makes rapid progress. "As yet,"as Mr Disraeli has said, "it is only a light breeze which hardly stirs the foliage, but soon it will be the unchained hurricane, overturning everything in its path." In Germany, socialism is an organized party, which has its journals, carries on a struggle in all the large towns, and sends to the Reichstag an increasing number of representatives. In Austria, Spain, and England, the masses of working men are penetrated with its ideas; and, what is more serious, even professors of political economy become Katheder-Socialisten.
If the crisis seems more intense in France, it is not because the danger is greater. On the contrary, social order there rests on the solid rock of a soil divided among five millions of proprietors. But the communicative spirit, the natural eloquence and quick logic of the French, reduce every problem to a more concise form, and so the struggle breaks out sooner.
The vivid imagination of this brilliant people exaggerates dangers, and so urges the two parties to extreme measures. But, sooner or later, the economic situation being almost everywhere the same, class enmities will everywhere endanger liberty; and the more property is concentrated and the contrast accentuated between the rich and the poor, the more will society be threatened with profound revolutions. Either equality must be established, or free institutions will disappear. Tocqueville failed to see that here was the real rock ahead for democracy. But Macaulay demonstrated it with terrible eloquence, in his letter on American Institutions ( Times , 6 April, 1860), in which he shews the future reserved for the United States.
In the author's opinion, modern democracies will only escape the destiny of ancient democracies by adopting laws such as shall secure the distribution of property among a large number of holders, and shall establish a very general equality of conditions. The lofty maxim of justice, To every one according to his work, must be realised, so that property may actually be the result of labour, and that the well-being of each may be proportional to the co-operation which he gives to production.
To attain this result, quiritary ownership, such as the Romans, men of conquest and masters of slaves, have bequeathed to us, is not sufficiently flexible, or human. Without returning to institutions of primitive times, I believe we might borrow from the Germanic and Slavonic system of possession, principles more consonant than the Roman law with the requirements of democracies, because they recognize in every one the natural, individual right of property.
Generally, in speaking of property, we assume that it can only exist in a single form, namely, that which is in force around us. This is a profound and mischievous mistake, which prevents our rising to a higher conception of law. The exclusive, personal, and hereditary dominium , as applied to land, is a fact of relatively recent origin; and for centuries men knew and practised nothing but collective ownership. As the organization of society has undergone such profound modifications in the course of centuries, we should not be forbidden to search for social arrangements more perfect than those with which we are acquainted. We are in fact compelled to do so, under pain of coming to a deadlock, in which civilization must perish.
As Fichte remarked in his treatise on morals ( System der Ethik ), and Don Francesco de Cardenas in his excellent History of Property in Spain ( Ensayo sobre la historia de la Propietad territorial en Espana ), analysis discovers two elements in the right of property, a social element and an individual element. It is not instituted solely in the interest of the individual and to guarantee him the enjoyment of the fruits of his toil; it is also instituted in the interests of society, to secure its stability and useful action. These two sides of property correspond to the double aspect under which we may consider man, whether as the isolated individual, pursuing his own object independently, or as a citizen and member of society, bound to his fellows by many relations and various obligations.
In primitive times the social element prevails in landed property. The soil is a collective domain belonging to the tribe; individuals have only a temporary enjoyment of it. In Greece, a large portion of the territory belonged to the State, and the rest remained subject to its supreme power.
