The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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XXXll INTRO D UCTION. on Democracy, in his study of it in America did not perceive this danger, which, in truth, did not then exist ; but anot er French writer, M. Dupont-WTiite, who unites profoundness of thought with a brilliant and original style, makes the danger clearly appear by citing a letter of Macaulay’s, which reads h e a prophecy. In this letter, dated the 23rd of May, 1857, and addressed to an American, Macaulay says, that though for the moment the immense tracts of unoccupied land in America may serve to stave off the evil day, yet the time would come when the rapid increase of population would produce the same economic conditions there as here, the same crises, stoppages of work, lowering of wages, and strikes, and that then the democratic institutions of America would be put to the test. What will the issue be ? “ It is quite plain,” he says, “ that your Govern ment will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority, for with you the majority is the Government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy. And then he adds :— “The day will come when, in the State of New York a multitude of ■«11 preferred by the working man who hears his children crying for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperUy from returning. Either some Cæsar or Napoleon will seize the reins of Govern- ment with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth ; with this difference-that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country and by vniir own institutions. Macaulay wrote this twenty-seven years ago. We must not forget that the Greek democracies passed through similar trials and perished.

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