ey take on be of much the
same character. "It is perfectly possible, to revive even in our own
day the fiscal tyranny which once left even European populations in
doubt whether it was worth while preserving life by thrift and toil.
You have only to tempt a portion of the population into temporary
idleness, by promising them a share in a fictitious hoard lying in an
imaginary strong-box which is supposed to contain all human wealth.
You have only to take the heart out of those who would willingly labor
and save, by taxing them ad misericordiam for the most laudable
philanthropic objects. For it makes not the smallest difference to the
motives of the thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether their
fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a feudal baron, or a
democratic legislature, and whether they are taxed for the benefit of
a corporation called Society or for the advantage of an individual
styled King or Lord," writes Sir Henry Maine. In short it matters not
in the least what you baptize oppression, so long as it is oppression,
or whether you call your tyrant "Jim" or "My Lord," so long as he is a
tyrant. Many people are slowly awakening to the fact in England and in
America, that plain citizen "Jim" can be a most merciless tyrant in
spite of his unpretentious name and title. No royal tyrant ever dared
to attempt to gain his ends by dynamiting innocent people, as did the
trades-unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve a whole population as
did the trades-unionists in London. We have not escaped tyranny by
changing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social and of all its
dilutions since, has been that individuals go to make up society, and
that society under the name of the state must take charge of those
individuals. The French Revolution was a failure because it fell back
upon that tiresome and futile philosophy of government which had been
that of Louis XIV. Louis XIV took care of the individual units of the
state by exploiting them. He was a sound enough Socialist in theory.
France gained nothing of much value along the lines of political
philosophy.

Whether it is Louis XIV who says "l'etat c'est moi" or the citizens
banded together in a state, who claim that the functions of the state
are to meddle with the business of every man, matters little. It is
the same socialistic philosophy at bottom, and it has produced to-day
a France of thirty-eight millions of people pledged to sterility, one
million of whom are