"The legislation of the Revolution diminished the paternal authority and converted the family into a republic. Marriage became a contract which could be broken at will by either party, a contract which allowed of short notice and which could be concluded for any space of time. People married for a year, sometimes only for a month. They married for fun or for profit, and marriages were dissolved and others contracted if it paid to do so."[974] The French police reports tell us: "The depravity of morals is extremely great, and the new generation is growing up in a state of disorder which promises to have the most unfortunate and most far-reaching consequences to future generations. Sodomy and Sapphic love flourish with the same shamelessness as prostitution, and the progress of all these vices is terrifying."[975] From another source we learn: "Society has become terribly depraved; fornication, adultery, incest, and murder by poison or violence are the fruits of philosophism. Things are as bad in the villages as in Paris. Justices of the peace report that immorality has spread to such an extent that many communes will soon no longer be inhabitable by decent people."[976] This is the new and the better world towards which Socialism is steering.
FOOTNOTES:
[896] Aristotle, Politics, Book ii. Chapter v.
[897] Blatchford, What is this Socialism? p. 2.
[898] Russell Williams, The Difficulties of Socialism, p. 13.
[899] Kautsky, The Socialist Republic, p. 23.
[900] Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, pp. 19, 20.
[901] Morris and Bax, Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, p. 9.
[902] Davidson, The Old Order and the New, p. 164.