Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 424 | Page 3

official returns, there are in France upwards of 348,000 dwellings with no other aperture than the door; and nearly 2,000,000 with only one window. And to this the 'pattern nation' has brought itself by its headlong haste to upset, not simply improve, a bad institution. The living in these windowless and single-windowed abodes is not living, in the proper sense of the word: it is existence without comfort, without hope. The next step is to burrow in holes like rabbits.
It will thus be observed, that the subdivision of real estate has brought France pretty much back to the point where it started--a small wealthy class, and a very numerous poor class. The computation is, that in a population of 36,000,000, only 800,000 are in easy circumstances. A considerable proportion of this moneyed class are usurers, living in Paris and other large towns. They are the lenders of cash on bonds, which squeeze out the very vitals of the nation--the gay flutterers and loungers of the streets, theatres, and caf��s, drawing the means of luxurious indulgence from the myriads who toil out their lives in the fields.
Obtaining a glimpse of these facts, we can no longer wonder at the submission of the French peasantry to a thinning of their families by military conscription; at the eager thirst for office which afflicts the whole nation; or at the morbid desire to overturn society, and strike out a better organisation. As matters grow worse, this passion for wholesale change becomes more fervidly manifested. The jacqueries of the middle ages are renewed. Various districts of country, in which poverty has reached its climax, break into universal insurrection. It is a war levied by those who have nothing against those who have something. To have coin in the pocket, is to be the enemy. The cry is: Down with the rich; take all they have got, and divide the plunder 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