elf-evident propositions,
which none could have the hardihood to gainsay, yet, when once admitted,
the deductions inevitably flowing therefrom none could resist. The
propositions seemed safe and indisputable, but the deductions evolved
from those propositions were as frightful to the legitimist as they were
delightful to the liberal. That each man is born the heir to the same
natural rights--that each man, alike and equally with all others, has a
birthright of which he cannot be divested and of which he cannot divest
himself, to act, to think and to pursue happiness wherever he can find
it without infringement on the rights of his fellow beings--none were
disposed to deny. That each human animal, as each animal of inferior
grade, has, also, the right of subsistence, drained from the bosom of
the earth, the great mother of us all, which without his foreknowledge
or wish gave him being, seemed, also, indisputable. But when from these
propositions were deduced that crime is rather the result of misery
than depravity, and that the office of government is more to prevent
crime by creating happiness than to punish it by creating misery, and
that for the natural rights resigned by the individual in entering into
and upholding the social system human government is bound to afford
employment and subsistence to each of its members, that labor and its
produce should be in partnership, that competition should be abolished,
and work and wages so distributed by the State as to equalize the
condition of each individual in the community, and, finally, that the
claims of labor are not satisfied by wages, but the workman is entitled
to a proprietary share in the capital which employs him, inasmuch as all
the woes and miseries of the laborer arise exclusively from the
competition for work--when these deductions were advanced the opulent
and the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution of
property, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a red
republic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose in
frightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded to
illustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist,
Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fiery
flood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause,
mingled with cries of rage and dismay, rose from all quarters of the
hall. Unmoved and undaunted, that marble man, livid as a s