INTRODUCTION.

THE  PROGRESS  OF  SOCIALISM.
W HEN  Louis  Reybaud,  in  1853,  wrote  the  article  in  the
Dictionnaire  de  1  Économie  Politiqueos  “Socialism”
a  term  to  which  he  first  gave  currency—he  believed  that  we
had  heard  the  last  of  the  disordered  hallucinations  of  Socialists.
“  Socialism  is  dead,”  he  exclaimed  ;  “  to  speak  of  it  is  to  pronounce ­
  its  funeral  oration.”  This  was,  in  fact,  the  general
opinion  some  years  ago.  Systems  of  Socialism  were  then
studied  only  as  curious  examples  of  the  aberrations  of  the
*^0  human  mind.
To-day  we  have  fallen  into  the  opposite  extreme  :  we  see
Socialism  everywhere.  The  red  spectre  haunts  our  imaginations, ­
  and  we  fancy  ourselves  on  the  eve  of  a  social  cataclysm.
What  is  certain  is,  that  Socialism  has  recently  spread,  under
various  forms,  to  an  extraordinaiy  extent  In  its  violent  form,
it  is  taking  possession  of  the  minds  of  almost  all  mining  and
manufacturing  operatives,  and  at  this  very  moment  it  is
beginning  to  invade  the  rural  districts.  The  agrarian  movement ­
  which  lately  agitated  Ireland,  which  has  just  been
suppressed  in  Andalusia,  and  which  is  brewing  in  other  places,
IS  plainly  inspired  by  socialistic  ideas.  In  scientific  garb.
Socialism  is  transforming  political  economy  and  is  occupying
the  greater  number  of  professorial  chairs  in  Germany  and
Italy.  Under  the  form  of  State  Socialism,  it  sits  in  the
council-chamber  of  sovereigns  ;  and  finally,  under  a  Christian
lorm,  It  IS  making  its  influence  felt  in  the  hearts  of  the  Catholic
clergy,  and  still  more  in  the  hearts  of  the  ministers  of  the
different  Protestant  denominations.
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