INTRODUCTION. 
let them go on as they are doing.) In free competition the 
most able succeed, and this should be our desire. Nothing 
could be more absurd than to endeavour, by misdirec e 
charity, to preserve those whom nature has condemned to 
disappear, and thus place obstacles in the way of progress. 
Yield place to the strong, for might makes right. 
Christianity and Socialism hold quite another language. 
They declare war against the strong, that is to say, the rich, 
and aspire to raise up the poor and the down-trodden, d rey 
subordinate these so-called natural laws to the law of Justice. 
Let there be full liberty, but only under the guidance of right. 
In the words of the Sermon on the Mount, “ Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall 
be filled.” It is impossible to understand by what strange 
blindness Socialists adopt Darwinian theories, which condemn 
their claims of equality, while at the same time they reject 
Christianity, whence those claims have issued and whence 
their justification may be found. At all events, we may 
conclude that the religion which has shaped us all, advocates 
as well as adversaries, has formulated in the clearest terms the 
principles of Socialism, and that it is precisely in Christian 
countries that socialistic doctrines have taken deepest root 
Let us now consider the way in which religious Socialism 
has become the political Socialism of our day. When the 
Declaration of Independence in the United States, and t e 
French Revolution, proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, 
and inscribed the equality of men among the articles of the 
constitution, the principle of the brotherhood of man descended 
from the heights of the ideal and from the dreams of Utopia 
to become thenceforth the watchword of the radical party in 
every country to which the ideas that triumphed in America 
and Paris have spread. Equality of political rights leads 
inevitably to the demand for equality of conditions, that 
is to say, the apportionment of well-being according to work 
accomplished. Universal suffrage demands as its complement 
universal well-being ; for it is a paradox that the people should 
be at once wretched and sovereign. As Aristotle and Montes 
quieu so continually insist, democratic institutions presuppose