cial features and institutions, just as truly as the nobility of the
Middle Ages did with respect to the basis of their privilege, landed
property."

Accordingly, in my use of the term, as I have explicitly and
painstakingly defined it, the man of means, the man of the
upper-middle class, is a _bourgeois_ in case he proceeds to set up the
essentially harmless and inoffensive fact of his large property as a
legal condition of participation in the direction of public affairs;
in short, when he proceeds to set up the ownership of capital as a
legal and political prerogative, and so abolishes the equality of the
propertied and the unpropertied classes before the law, and thereby
infringes upon the liberty and further growth of the people, in the
interest of accumulated wealth and continued upper-class mastery. Only
under these circumstances, as I particularly point out, does the
_bourgeoisie_ become a privileged class, which it otherwise, in spite
of all inequality of wealth, is not.

In my pamphlet I point out how all this has its effect through the
census rating whereby admission to a share in the direction of public
policy, through eligibility to any legislative body, is so limited by
property qualifications as to make the possession of capital a
prerequisite. I point out further that this effect follows equally
whether the property qualification is open and above-board or
under-hand, and finally that the existing three-class system of
elections, dating back to 1849, amounts to such an under-hand,
disguised property rating.

The point at which the pamphlet strikes, therefore, albeit in a purely
theoretical way, is the three-class system of elections. It makes no
attack upon the propertied classes, whose accumulated wealth, on the
contrary, I am repeatedly at pains to define as wholly incontestable,
inoffensive, inviolable and perfectly lawful.

This three-class system of elections is one of our political
institutions.

Now, this being the case, why has not the public prosecutor indicted
me under section 101 of the criminal code, "for having exposed the
measures of the State to hatred and to contempt?" To be sure, if the
prosecutor had chosen to make this charge, I should have known how to
answer him. To go into this matter today would be superfluous,
for I am not accused of this offense, and my defense would be drawn
out endlessly if I were to defend myself against charges that have
never been brought against