tage. Nobody can foresee these and
speculate upon them with success. When it is proposed to "reorganize
society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be
noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the
vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. "Wealth,
whether in land or money, has been increased by marriages and
inheritances, reduced to fragments by divisions, even in noble families
[in spite of settlements and entails], dissipated by prodigals,
reconstituted by men of economical habits, centupled by industrious and
competent men of enterprise, scattered by the indolent, the unfortunate,
and the men of bad judgment, who have risked it unwisely. Political
events have affected it as well as the favor of princes, advantageous
offices in the state, popular revolts, wars, confiscations, from the
abolition of serfdom in the fourteenth century until the abolition, in
1790, of the dues known as feudal, although they were, for the most
part, owned by members of the bourgeoisie."[369] So it will be in the
future, in spite of all that men can do. If two men had the same sum of
money in 1200, and one bought land while the other became a money
lender, anywhere in western Europe, the former would to-day be more or
less rich according to the position of his land. He might be a great
millionaire. The other would have scarcely anything left.[370] Shall we
then all buy land now? Let those do so who can foresee the course of
values in the next seven hundred years. The popular notion is that
nobles have always owned land. The truth is that men who have acquired
wealth have bought land and got themselves ennobled. In France, "in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nineteen twentieths of those who
were called nobles were middle-class men enriched, decorated, and
possessed of land."[371] The middle class in western Europe has been
formed out of the labor class within seven hundred years. The whole
middle class, therefore, represents the successful rise of the serfs,
but, since a labor class still remains, it is asserted that there has
been no change. On the other hand, there has been a movement of nobles
and middle-class grandees downward into the labor class and the
proletariat. It was said, a few years ago, that a Plantagenet was a
butcher in a suburb of London. It is also asserted that representatives
of great mediaeval families are now to be found as small farmers, farm
laborers