122 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
the place of healthy emulation, the small crafts are being crushed 
out, professional work is decaying, wages are being disgrace 
fully lowered, pauperism is spreading like a hideous leprosy, 
the oppressed labourer feels his heart swelling with an im 
placable 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 organ 
izing 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 non- 
converted 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 confis 
cating 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 ! . . .”