s,
and became mercenaries, or slaves or tyrants; left to those who had
monopolized the soil, the defense of their property: and these, being
few in numbers, parsimonious after the nature of their class, and
effeminate from luxurious living and habits of indolence, fell easy
victims to the rapacity and iron nerve of Goth and Vandal. The great
French Revolution would have never occurred but for the monopoly of
land, which, after long ages, became centered in a few hands, who by
reason of this were a privileged class and in the refinement of
language had been designated as the "nobility." The nobility, as was
natural, having been created by the State, not only ground the
proletariat to powder but dictated to the State. When it was no longer
possible to purchase land, because those whose nobility rested upon it
would not alienate it, and when the proletariat had been reduced to a
state of vassalage, more vile and grinding than slavery itself, the
proletariat rose up in its might and crushed at one tremendous blow
the hydra-headed monstrosity. Marat, Danton and Robespiere
concentrated in their intense natures the venom, the hate, and the
desperation of the people--a more terrible triumvirate than the
celebrated one which colored the Tiber with the patrician blood of
Rome. The Nihilism of Russia is the outgrowth of monopoly in land and
the consequent enslavement of the people by the aristocracy, beginning
with the autocrat upon his throne. England has reached a transition
period. The pressure of her population has become so intense, that the
great producing classes can no longer stand the tension and live. The
land has been filched from the people to enrich the brainless
favorites and the courtesans of kings, and entailed upon their progeny
generation after generation. The land of Great Britain is held by the
nobility and the princely cormorants of trade, who exact rental which
cannot be paid from the produce of the soil, so usurious is it, or who
turn the rich acres into pleasure grounds and pasturages. As Nero
fiddled while Rome was one vast blaze of conflagration and horror, so
the nobility of Great Britain dance and make merry while the people
starve or seek in other lands that opportunity to live which their
country denies to them. For the past five years the government of
Great Britain has been engaged in a most desperate struggle with the
people of one of her constituent islands, the agitation assuming, like
the chamel