cted, poor families will no
longer be deprived of their resources, nor the workers of
encouragement and employment. Our steps will no longer be dogged by
the disgusting spectacle of infirmities and of shameful poverty." The
last cynical passage is the single truth in this eulogy.

If Napoleon asks for the views of his lawyers, prefects, and
engineers, why should not the King of Prussia address himself to _his_
authorities?

Why did not Napoleon order the immediate extinction of mendicancy? Of
equal value is "Prussian's" question: "Why does not the King of
Prussia order the immediate education of neglected children?" Does
"Prussian" know what the King should have ordered? Nothing less than
the immediate extinction of the proletariat. Children cannot be
educated unless they are fed and freed from industrial labour. The
feeding and educating of neglected children is tantamount to feeding
and educating the whole adolescent proletariat, and would mean the
extinction of the proletariat and of pauperism.

The Convention once had the courage to order the abolition of
pauperism, yet not "immediately," as "Prussian" requires of his king,
but only after it had entrusted the Committee of Public Safety with
the preparation of the necessary plans and proposals, and after the
latter had utilized the exhaustive investigations of the Constituent
Assembly into the state of French poverty and proposed through Barrere
the establishment of the _Livre de la bienfaisance nationale_, etc.
What was the result of the instructions of the Convention? That there
was one more order in the world and a year later starving women
besieged the Convention.

The Convention, however, represented the maximum of political energy,
of political power, and of political insight.

No government in the world has ever issued peremptory orders
concerning pauperism, without an understanding with the authorities.
The English parliament even sent commissioners into all the countries
of Europe, in order to become acquainted with the various
administrative remedies for pauperism. But so far as States have been
concerned with pauperism, they have either confined themselves to
administrative and charitable measures, or have gone back upon such
measures.

Can the State behave otherwise?

The State will never find the cause of social crime in the "State and
the institution of society," as "Prussian" requires of his king. Where
there are political parties, each finds