of us, knowing good and evil,
looking before and behind. In this direction--in the gradual improvement
of the labourer--lies our future progress, progress slow and toilsome,
little suited to the socialist who calculates on changing, as with the
touch of a wand, the whole aspect of society.

We said that some of the ideas of Charles Fourier had been adopted by
men who do not exactly aspire to the rank of social reformers. We will
give an instance, which at the same time will illustrate this tendency
to introduce legislation on those very subjects from which it has been
the effort of all enlightened minds, during the last century, to expel
it. A M. Ducpetiaux, a Belgian, who comes vouched to us for a safe and
respected member of society by the number of titles, official and
honorary, appended to his name, in a voluminous and chiefly statistical
work, _Sur la Condition des Jeunes Ouvriers_, wherein his views are in
the main temperate and judicious, declares himself a partisan of some
system similar to what Fourier points out in his famous
formula--_associer les hommes en capital, travail, et talent_. He
requires a union of interest, a partnership in fact, between the
capitalist and the workman. M. Ducpetiaux does not lay down the
proportion in which the profits are to be divided between them; he is
too cautious to give any figures--there are some ideas which do not bear
the approach of arithmetic--but he adopts the principle. It is thus that
he speaks in his introductory chapter.

"In so conflicting a state of things[30] there remains but one
remedy: to re-establish violated equity, to restore to the
producers their legitimate share of what is produced, to bring
back industry to its primitive aim and object--such is the work
which is now, by the aid of every influence, individual and
social, to be prosecuted. It is not a partial relief that is
called for, but the complete restoration (rehabilitation
complete) of the labourer. The mark which ages of servitude
have impressed upon his front, cannot be effaced but by an
energetic and sustained effort. The palliatives hitherto
employed, have only exposed the magnitude of the evil. This
evil we must henceforth attack in its origin, in the
organization of labour, and the constitution of society.

"What is the existing base of the relations between master and
workman? Selfishness. Every one for himself,