CONSERVATIVE SOCIALISTS. 
93 
and, finally, others have rallied to the group of Evangelical 
Socialists, with whom we shall soon become acquainted. 
Nevertheless, the most learned among them, Herr Rudolf 
Meyer, whose curious work, the Emancipations-kampf des vier 
ten Standes, we have already cited, summarizes in this book the 
programme of his shade of thought, which he had in part 
explained at the Congress of the Kathedersocialisten, in 1872, 
at Eisenach. Herr Meyer declares, first of all, for the main 
tenance of universal suffrage. It is, he says, the best way to 
initiate the Fourth Estate, the people, to the realities of political 
life, and to preserve them from hopeless chimeras. The example 
of the Third Estate in France is highly instructive upon this 
point. Unable to take any part in the direction of public 
affairs, of which they had no experience, they dreamed of 
absolute reforms, conceived by the imagination, and deduced 
to their logical conclusion. The idea of Herr Meyer is correct. 
It is borrowed from De Tocqueville, who expands it admirably 
in the chapter of his Ancien Regime, entitled “ How, about the 
middle of the eighteenth century, men of letters became the 
principal politicians of the country, and the effects which 
resulted therefrom.” It cannot, however, be said that in 
Germany universal suffrage has preserved the labouring classes 
from the spirit of revolution. It is, nevertheless, true that it 
has brought them down from the golden cloudland of Utopia 
in order to marshal them upon the battle-field of private 
interests. This, however, is neither more convenient nor more 
reassuring to their employers. 
The Conservative Herr Meyer invokes the opinion of 
Rodbertus in order to demonstrate that the State should 
regulate the distribution of wealth according to justice. Here 
tofore all efforts have been directed to the increase of produc 
tion. At a certain point, however, the question of distribution 
becomes the more important. When the development of trade 
results in creating, on the one side, an extremely wealthy class, 
and, on the other, a numerous class of proletarians, it may be 
said that the true order of things is disturbed. The consequence 
and characteristic symptom of this disorder is the appearance 
of demoralizing luxury, pushing the privileged few who revel in