THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

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read  at  the  first  sittings  of  the  Congress  of  Bâle  stated  all
this  progress.  The  Times  wrote  on  the  subject  :  “  We  must
go  back  to  the  origin  of  Christianity  or  to  the  epoch  of  the
barbarian  invasions  to  meet  with  a  movement  analogous  to
that  of  the  working  men  to-day,  and  it  seems  to  threaten
existing  civilization  with  a  fate  similar  to  that  inflicted  by  the
northern  hordes  on  the  ancient  world.”  It  was,  in  truth,  the
moment  of  expansion,  soon  to  be  followed  by  a  no  less  rapid
decay.
The  Congress  of  Bâle,  which  held  its  sittings  from  the  5th
to  the  12th  of  September,  1869,  had  nothing  fierce  about  it.  It
borrowed  from  the  beautiful  country,  which  it  had  honoured
with  its  choice,  that  idyllic  character  which  all  its  meetings
spontaneously  took.  The  delegates,  eighty  in  number,  were
received  by  the  members  of  both  town  and  country  sections  in
Bâle  at  the  Café  National.  A  procession  of  about  two  thousand
persons  marched  with  music  and  banners  across  the  town  to
the  garden  of  a  brasserie,  where  each  took  his  place  while  the
society  of  the  Griitli  sang.  The  address  of  welcome  to
the  delegates  was  pronounced  by  citizen  Bauhin,  who  was  at
the  same  time  president  of  the  Bâle  sections  and  attorneygeneral
  of  the  canton—a  combination  of  functions  which
appears  to  have  caused  no  astonishment.
After  hearing  the  reports,  the  congress  took  up  again  the
questions  already  decided  at  Brussels,  namely,  the  question  ot
landed  property  and  that  of  societies  for  strikes.  They  were
naturally  determined  in  the  same  way  by  fifty-four  ayes  against
four  noes,  and  thirteen  abstentions.  The  following  resolution
was  adopted  ;—“The  congress  declares  that  society  has  the
right  of  abolishing  individual  property  in  the  soil  and  of  assigning ­
  it  to  the  community.”  It  is  a  strange  thing  that  no  congress
of  the  International  ever  yet  concerned  itself  with  houses  and
industrial  capital,  factories,  buildings,  machines,  floating  capital.
In  the  speeches  it  is  often  said  that  the  labourer  ought  to  be
the  owner  of  the  instrument  of  his  labour  ;  but  how,  by  virtue
of  what  arrangements,  and  of  what  industrial  organization  ?—
this  seems  never  to  have  troubled  them  at  all.
M.  Tolain  spoke  in  favour  of  individual  property.  Your