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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

the  place  of  healthy  emulation,  the  small  crafts  are  being  crushed
out,  professional  work  is  decaying,  wages  are  being  disgracefully ­
  lowered,  pauperism  is  spreading  like  a  hideous  leprosy,
the  oppressed  labourer  feels  his  heart  swelling  with  an  implacable ­
  hatred,  and  he  has  no  safety  but  in  resistance,  no
help  but  in  war.  Coalitions  and  strikes  take  the  place  of
organized  labour.  Laissez  faire,  laissez  passer  ;  this  is  the
decree  of  Liberalism,  this  is  revolutionary  liberty  ;  and  it  has
but  one  name—the  liberty  of  might.”  *  These  lines  seem
borrowed  from  Bishop  Ketteler’s  own  book.
The  Bishop  of  Mayence  did  not  conceal  his  sympathy  for
Lassalle,  at  the  time  even  when  he  was  founding  and  organizing ­
  the  Socialist  party  in  Germany.  When  the  Countess
Hatzfeld  visited  him  to  solicit  his  aid  in  removing  the  obstacles
which  stood  in  the  way  of  the  marriage  of  Lassalle,  a  nonconverted
  Jew,  with  the  daughter  of  a  Bavarian  diplomatist
who  would  not  hear  of  it.  Bishop  Ketteler  highly  praised  the
speeches  and  enterprise  of  the  famous  agitator.  The  social
question,  said  the  prelate,  is  far  more  serious  than  these
political  questions  which  fill  newspapers  and  parliaments  with
their  endless  debates.  I'hese  latter  interest  the  bourgeois
alone  ;  the  other  concerns  the  very  existence  of  the  masses.
For  the  working  man,  the  question  is  to  find  the  means  of
living.  This  idea  is  continually  repeated  in  the  German
Socialist  papers  under  this  “  realistic  ”  formula  :  “  The  social
question  is  a  stomach  question  ”  {^Dic  sociale  Frage  ist  cine
Magenfrage).
Upon  what  does  the  condition  of  the  labourer  depend  ?
*  As  it  is  important  to  show  to  what  point  the  French  Ultramontanes
use  the  same  language  and  tactics  as  the  German,  we  may  cite  another
passage  from  the  speech  of  Count  de  Mun  ;  “  Liberty,  gentlemen  !  Where
is  it  ?  I  hear  it  spoken  of  on  all  hands,  but  what  I  see  is  people  confiscating ­
  it  to  their  own  profit.  And  if  I  look  for  it  in  what  touches  you  most
keenly,  in  what  you  have  most  at  heart,  in  this  great  labour  question,
which  contains  all  others,  and  which  has  given  rise  to  the  social  as  well
as  the  political  battle  of  our  days,  if  I  look  there  for  the  traces  of  lil)erty,
I  discover  more  than  anywhere  else  this  revolutionary  counterfeit.  I  hear
the  absolute  liberty  of  labour  proclaimed  as  the  very  principle  of  the
enfranchisement  of  the  people,  and,  in  practice,  I  see  it  result  in  the  slavery
of  the  labourers  !  Gentlemen,  you  are  artisans  and  tradesmen  ;  tell  me  if
I  am  mistaken  !  .  .  .”