establish their institutions of insurance without
issuing any shares, I have never believed, and it would be difficult
to convince me of it. According to my feeling of right and wrong, we
cannot force anybody to join private insurance companies which may
become bankrupt even under good management, owing to fluctuations in
the market, or to panics, and which have to arrange their premiums so
that dividends are realized for those who are investing their capital,
or at least interest on the invested money and the hope of dividends.
To this I cannot lend my assistance. If the State is going to exercise
compulsion, it must, I believe, undertake the insurance itself. It may
be the empire for all, or the individual State--but, without this, no
compulsion!

Nor have I the courage, as I have already said, to exercise any
compulsion if I cannot offer something in return. This contribution of
a third is, as I said before, much smaller than it looks, because
the associations will be greatly relieved of the old burdens which the
State had imposed on them. If this is communism, as the last speaker
called it, and not socialism, I do not care one iota. I shall call it
again and again "practical Christianity legally demonstrated." If,
however, it is communism, then communism has been extensively
practised in the districts for a long while, and actually under State
compulsion.

The previous speaker said that by our method the lower classes would
be oppressed with indirect taxes in order to collect the funds for the
care of the poor. But I ask you, gentlemen, what is being done in the
large cities, in Berlin for instance, which the speaker thinks is
splendidly governed by the liberal ring? Here the poor man is taken
care of with the proceeds of the tax on rents, which is exacted of his
slightly less poor brother; and to-morrow he may have this brother as
his companion in misery, when a warrant is executed against the latter
for the non-payment of this tax. That is more cruel than if the
payment were made from the tax on tobacco or on alcohol.

The previous speaker said that I had spoken against the tax on
alcohol. I really do not remember this, and I should be grateful if he
would prove this by quoting one word. I have always mentioned tobacco
and alcohol as commodities on which larger taxes should be levied, but
I have expressed a doubt whether it is right to tax the alcohol in
factories while it is being made. Many States, as for ins