104 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
evolution” in the midst of free Communes and autonomous 
be done is “to fire the towns," so as to .Ilumínate the 
''"'it was the Congress of Brussels that explained with the 
greatest detail the economic programme of the Interna lonal. 
What does this word include ? Inasmuch as the division into 
separate States is to disappear, it probably means t e 
human collectivity,” the whole of humanity. I shall then 
be co-proprietor of the land of the Zulus and of the Esquimaux, 
as they will be of the field I cultivate. Will this dominium of 
humaaiity be inerely nominal, like that which the snvere^^i 
stm possesses in Einglarid overall the sod of the British .fies? 
If this be so, matters would be left as they are, with one fiction 
added Will it, on the contrary, be an effective dominium with 
receipt of revenue and selection of occupants ? We are, then, 
brought to a conception hardly intelligible and absolutely 
unworkable. When we read their statements of reasons, we 
so; but then, what inequality between those who, wth equal 
labour, obtain from fertile land eighty bushels of «^eid, and 
those who extract from refractory soil only forty bushels 
rye? In short, assign the property in land to the collectm y, 
whatever it may be, and you will thus have secured neither 
justice, nor equality, nor happiness for all. . 
^ The Economist cannot, like the Physicist, check the truth 
of his conceptions by experiments in a laboratory, ut e ca 
judge of the effect of certain institutions by the study of com- 
Lltive legislation. There are countries where the system 
belongs to the State, for it draws nearly the whole net produc .