ommunity. There
were no private fortunes and no private poverty. Life was simple and
contented, and dull. Under the action of the usual social forces, this
system had been gradually breaking up, through many generations. Property
had mainly passed into personal possession Society had recrystallized
around the individual. Individualism had developed its customary
tendencies to inequality. The ancient equality of the free farmers of
Israel was already disappearing. Fortunes, undreamed of a couple of
centuries earlier, were becoming common. Greed was pushing men beyond
legitimate acquisition into respectable robbery. The old-time rights of
commonalty were disappearing in pasture, and farming land, and forest. The
village commons were being "enclosed" by local potentates. Monopolies of
the natural resources of all wealth, the inalienable dower of the people
at large, were working their inevitable consequences. Below the wealthy
class, which was rising to the top of society, there was forming at the
bottom a new and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the struggle
for existence; a deposit of the feebleness and ignorance and innocence of
the people. In the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the nation was
breaking up into classes, alienated, unsympathetic, hostile. Selfishness
was threatening ruin to the State.

In the midst of these dangerous social tendencies the prophets came
forward as "men of the people." Like brave Latimer at Paul's Cross, these
fearless preachers stood in the marketplaces to denounce monopoly and the
tyranny of capital. They were not affrighted by the hue and cry that, if
human nature was the same then as now, was raised against them, in the
name of the sacred rights of property. They were not beguiled by the
sophisms of those who doubtless proved conclusively that the best
interests of the people were being furthered by the fullest freedom of the
able and crafty to enrich themselves _ad libitum_. They could not have
stood an examination in political economy, but they knew the heart of the
whole matter, in a world whose core is the moral law. They saw, more or
less clearly, that there could be no lasting wealth in a society which was
not based upon a wide, deep common-wealth. They felt that the one clue to
follow in every social problem was held by conscience. So they struck
boldly at existing wrongs in the name of the Eternal Righteous One.

Woe unto them that join house to house,