all the honors and privileges of their office, and willing to sustain them in these, for the same reason. Take away this belief, and it is not long before they begin not only to withhold their contributions, to withdraw their allegiance, to refuse obedience, to lose respect and love for their spiritual superiors, but to cry out for their overthrow and even clamor for their blood. It is the same in respect to the secular privileged classes. And, at the present moment, since the greatest amount of external and material privilege, splendor, and worldly good in general has passed into the hands of the wealthy class, it is this class which is most immediately exposed to the brunt of the attack which is directed against caste and privilege. We will quote the language of one of the official organs of the International Society, the Egalité of Geneva, in order to show with the utmost clearness what is their spirit and aim:
“When the social revolution shall have dispossessed the bourgeoisie, in the interests of public utility, as the bourgeoisie dispossessed the nobles and the clergy, what will become of them?
“We cannot answer with positive certainty, but it is probable that the new order of things will give them, to borrow an expression from one of our friends, an infinitely more precious wealth, that of labor, well paid, at their discretion; so that they may be no longer obliged to live by the labor of others, as they have hitherto lived. In case some of them should be incapable of labor, which will happen to a good many, seeing that hitherto they have never learned the use of their ten fingers, what then? Well, then they will be given tickets for soup.
“‘But that is too little,’ the bourgeois will howl.
“‘Too little!’ the workman will reply—‘too little to have work, at your discretion, well paid, and soup for the invalids! The deuce! You are hard to please. We could have been well satisfied with such terms formerly.’”[119]
This is the unavoidable conclusion, and the practical as well as unavoidable conclusion, to which the whole mass of the people must come, unless they are convinced that the rich labor more usefully for the common good, and for the good of the poor, by means of their wealth with its attendant privileges, than they would by manual labor. They cannot be convinced of this, unless rich and poor alike recognize the truth of religious and Christian principles, and act on them practically. On the materialistic, anti-theistic ground, you cannot get a foothold against communism. It is all a waste of words to show that civilization, art and science, social and political splendor, national greatness, etc., require the concentration of wealth in a few hands. What does the poor man care for these, if this life is all, material good the summum bonum, and he himself miserable? His condition becomes insupportable, and he would rather burn the world with petroleum than bear it. It is very true that his desperate efforts will make his condition far worse. But he will not listen to you when you try to prove this to him, and, if you should even convince him, you would only render him more desperate. He must believe that he is under the government of God, that he has been redeemed by Christ, that heaven is opened to him by faith, that this world is a place for gaining merit by labor and suffering, that the difference in rank, wealth, and privilege is ordered by God for the good of all and every one, if he is to be contented with his lot. For him is the Pope, the bishop, the priest, the splendid church, the glittering vestments and chalices. For him, too, is government, for him is commerce and trade, for him science and art, for him are some
men rich. The church and the state are necessary for his good, and both church and state have need of men in whose hands wealth and power are deposited.
If the people are to be convinced of this, they must see that their spiritual and temporal superiors are convinced of it, and act accordingly. The rich as well as the poor must act on Christian principles—act as men who have a trust committed to them for the common good. They must, in a word, be zealous laborers in their own sphere. And it is especially incumbent on them, at the present time, to do everything possible to ameliorate and elevate the condition of that class of society who are not merely doomed to a life of manual labor, but to a life of misery and degradation. The people have been taught that they possess political sovereignty, and universal suffrage has given them the right and power to exercise it. Can they be expected, then, to remain content for ever with a sovereignty which is united with a state of social abjectness and misery? Is it safe or prudent to neglect, despise, or insult them; or to swindle them and defraud them of their rights, and at the same time to flaunt before their eyes the gaudy insignia of what they believe to be ill-gotten wealth? Especially when we consider that they read the newspaper every day. We leave it to our rich merchants and our educated men to think over and answer to themselves these questions.
For ourselves, we are convinced that the only safety for the wealthy class, and for society, is to be found in a return to purely Christian and Catholic principles. And we shall proceed to give our views more definitely and in detail upon the part which devolves on the rich in this work of social regeneration, in our future articles.
[119] See the Dublin Review, Oct., p. 459.