d obstacles both
without and within.

The Revolution was vanquished, but its ideas remained. Though at first
persecuted and derided, they became the watchword for a whole century of
slow evolution. The history of the nineteenth century is summed up in an
effort to put in practice the principles elaborated at the end of last
century: this is the lot of revolutions: though vanquished they
establish the course of the evolution which follows them. In the domain
of politics these ideas are abolition of aristocratic privileges,
abolition of personal government, and equality before the law. In the
economic order the Revolution proclaimed freedom of business
transactions; it said--"Sell and buy freely. Sell, all of you, your
products, if you can produce, and if you do not possess the implements
necessary for that purpose but have only your arms to sell, sell them,
sell your labour to the highest bidder, the State will not interfere!
Compete among yourselves, contractors! No favour shall be shown, the law
of natural selection will take upon itself the function of killing off
those who do not keep pace with the progress of industry, and will
reward those who take the lead."

The above is at least the _theory_ of the Revolution of 1789, and if the
State intervenes in the struggle to favour some to the detriment of
others, as we have lately seen when the monopolies of mining and railway
companies have been under discussion, such action is regarded by the
liberal school as a lamentable deviation from the grand principles of
the Revolution.

What has been the result? You know only too well, both women and men,
idle opulence for a few and uncertainty for the morrow and misery for
the greater number; crisis and wars for the conquest of markets, and a
lavish expenditure of public money to find openings for industrial
speculators. All this is because in proclaiming liberty of contract an
essential point was neglected by our fathers. Not but what some of them
caught sight of it, the best of them earnestly desired but did not dare
to realise it. While liberty of transactions, that is to say a conflict
between the members of society, was proclaimed, the contending parties
were not equally matched, and the powerful, armed for the contest by the
means inherited from their fathers, have gained the upper hand over the
weak. Under such conditions the millions of poor ranged against a few
rich could not do otherwise than give in.

Comrades!