THE  SOCIALISTS  OF  THE  CHAIR.

275

found  scholars  whose  authority  is  even  less  contested,  such  as
Roscher,  Nasse,  Conrad,  and  Von  Sybel.  It  is  none  the  less
true  that  the  members  of  the  new  school  pass  by  insensible
shades—descensus  Averni—from  the  borders  of  orthodoxy
to  the  confines  of  Radical  Socialism.
The  Socialism  of  the  Chair  may  be  said  to  have  taken
bodily  form,  and  to  have  been  established  as  a  special  doctrine
in  the  annual  reunions  of  the  Association  for  “  Social  Politics  ”
{Sozial  Politik),  the  first  of  which  took  place  on  the  6th  of
October,  1872.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  however,  that
similar  ideas  had  been  previously  expressed  in  Germany,
France,  and  England.  We  may  mention  in  particular  Godwin’s ­
  “Political  Justice,”  1793;  Sismondi’s  Nouveaux  principes ­
  dkconotnie  politique,  1827  ;  and  his  Études  sur  Véconomie
politique,  1836;  A.  '^mxqí's  La  Misère  des  classes  laborieuses  en
France  et  en  Angleterre  ;  Lorenz  Stein’s  Der  Socialismus  des
heutigen  Frankreichs,  1842  ;*  also  the  “  History  of  the  Petty
Crafts  in  Germany  during  the  Nineteenth  Century,”  f  by
G.  Schmoller,  Professor  at  the  University  of  Halle,  then  of
Strasburg,  and  now  of  Berlin,  in  which  book  he  has  well
brought  out  the  relative  character  of  economic  phenomena;
and  another  work  by  the  same  author,  in  which,  while  examining ­
  a  tax  on  income,  he  has  admirably  indicated  the  influence
of  morals  on  Political  Economy.  Again,  G.  Schönberg,  Professor ­
  at  the  University  of  Tübingen,  in  his  much-discussed
works  on  the  industrial  régime  in  our  epoch  and  in  the
Middle  Ages,J  admitted  the  necessity  of  protective  interven-•
  I  may  also  mention  an  article  that  I  published  in  1848,  in  a  Belgian
review,  the  Flandre  Libérale,  in  which  I  came  to  the  conclusions  now
held  by  the  Extreme  Left  of  the  Socialists  of  the  Chair.  It  is  a  critical
examination  of  the  letters  then  recently  published  by  Michael  Chevalier
on  the  organization  of  labour.  M.  Chevalier,  in  order  to  bring  about  the
solution  of  the  social  (¡uestion,  recommends  thrift,  property,  and  association.
I  replied,  “  Thrift  is  an  excellent  thing,  but  to  render  it  possible  for  the
labourer,  there  must  be  a  more  equitable  distribution  of  produce  ;  property
is  a  still  better  thing,  but  it  must  be  made  universal  ;  association  is  perfect,
but  it  ought  to  be  based  on  the  recr^nition  of  the  natural  right  of  appropriation ­
  common  to  all.”  I  was  inspired  by  the  “  Natural  Right  ’  of
Ahrens,  by  Fichte’s  book  on  the  French  Revolution,  and,  above  all,  by  the
ideas  of  our  eminent  professor  at  the  University  of  Ghent,  François  Huet.
t  Zur  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Kleingewerbe  im  xixten  Jahrhunderte.
$  Arbeitsämter  and  Deutsche  Zunftwesen  im  Mittelalter,  1868.