and
revolutionary in Great Britain, where the majority of workers possess
far less property than the majority of French, German, and Belgian
workers. The German Socialists, since Germany's unity, have gone the
way of Lassalle, the patriot Socialist. "They have ceased to denounce
the churches. From a necessary evil or a mere stop-gap, the present
State has become to them gradually, and perhaps unconsciously, their
own State."[1176] It is true that the Socialist vote is ten times
larger in Germany than in Great Britain. Nevertheless the danger of
Socialist troubles of the very gravest kind is perhaps greater in
England than in Germany, especially as unemployment is far greater in
Great Britain than in Germany.[1177] It seems that Great Britain will
pass through bad industrial times, and it should not be forgotten that
the French Revolutions of 1789 and of 1848 were made by unemployed
workmen upon whom Socialist and Communistic doctrines had taken a firm
hold; that the distress caused by the siege of Paris led to the rising
of the Commune in 1871; that between 1837 and 1848 the Chartist
movement in Great Britain rose and declined in almost exact
correspondence with the variations in the economic distress of the
people.

The present aspect of Great Britain resembles the aspect of
pre-Revolution France, owing to the unequal distribution of property.
"Almost three-quarters of the soil of France belonged to the nobility
and the clergy, or to 350,000 people. The whole of the rest of the
nation possessed less than one-third of the soil."[1178] The absence
of a sturdy property-owning lower middle-class, the disappearance of
the yeomen, is a source of instability and weakness to Great Britain.
Vast numbers of British workers live from hand to mouth. They are
being inflamed by Socialist agitators against the wealthy, and they
are being promised an equal share in the whole wealth of the nation.
In case of very acute distress, either through purely economic causes
or through a war with a strong naval power, which might lead to
starvation in a country which is absolutely dependent on foreign
countries for its food, a revolutionary outbreak in the overgrown
towns of Great Britain seems by no means impossible. The revolutionary
centre of the world may conceivably move from Paris to London.

The Socialists in Great Britain may not always remain a chaotic
multitude led by rival agitators who fight and intrigue against one
another. Soci